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Monday, December 30, 2013

The Lady Business

Another scene from my ongoing coming-of-age novel called The Lady Business.

 by Susan Matthewson     


Since I started my period last month, mama’s project of turning me from a tomboy into a young lady has intensified. She’s always scanning me like radar, alert for unladylike behaviors—like biting my nails, screeching at the top of my lungs, slumping when I walk, laughing too loud, and sitting on the couch with my legs spread eagled (somehow that one really gets her going).\

Mama never raises her voice or loses her temper, but you can always tell when she’s mad or serious because her soft Southern accent that sounds like honey puddling over hot biscuits takes on a flat, harsh edge like dried up brown sugar. I’ve been hearing that dried up tone too often, most recently this morning when she was annoyed because I wasn’t wearing the starter bra she just bought. Mama says my bosoms are blooming and I need to wear a bra. Mama always refers to breasts as bosoms. She says it’s more polite. But my daily inspections in the mirror reveal a chest flat as a board. I see no signs of bloom. I don’t even see a bud. I cannot be bothered by all the extra equipment and aggravating body processes involved with this lady business.  Considering menstrual periods, sanitary belts and napkins, shaving legs and underarms, cleaning fingernails—well, it just seems an unfair burden.

Hoping to avoid putting on that bra, I slipped out the back door into the alley and out of mama’s sight. That’s how I met Indy Jo Della Rippa.

The Della Rippas are new to our neighborhood and a hot topic of conversation. Mama never gossips, but I’ve heard other neighbors refer to Indy Jo as “cheap,” “flashy,” “fast.” Most women on our block don’t work, except for Mrs. Clarke, a music teacher, and Mrs. Harmon, the school nurse. Indy Jo works and it’s what she does that has everyone in a tizzy because she’s a cocktail waitress at the Airport Lounge. I don’t understand the uproar about this, although I guess it could catch you off guard to see Indy Jo prancing out her front door on the way to work in our sedate little neighborhood wearing high heels and black fishnet stockings with white ruffled panties peeking out from under the short satin skirt of a French maid’s costume   . Still, I think she’s kind of interesting. She’s definitely different.
                
So I was surprised when I passed the Della Rippas backyard to hear another Southern accent calling out, “Hey, sugar, what y’all up to today?”
                
A flash of bright color caught the corner of my eye and I turned to see Indy Jo strutting toward me wearing hot pink short shorts and a halter bra. She had a pink silk scarf tied around her platinum blond, shoulder-length hair that was all puffed up on the top and sides and turned up on the ends like a country western singer. She had on sparkly silver sandals and wore hot pink lipstick with rose-colored eye shadow.    
                
I couldn’t help but notice she had the biggest bosoms I’d ever seen in my life. Watching her jiggle around, I finally saw how a bra, which seemed so extraneous to me, could be of major significance to someone like Indy Jo. When she invited me in to have a soda pop with her, I knew right away that Indy Jo, different like me, just might be a kindred spirit.



                

Monday, December 9, 2013

To Tree or Not to Tree


by Liz Zuercher

We just moved into a smaller home and I can’t figure out where to put the Christmas tree.  I asked Gary what he thought about one spot in the living room and he nixed it.

“It would block traffic,” he said. “We’d knock it over every time we walked into the room.  Don’t bother with a tree.  Just put a wreath above the fireplace.”

“Wouldn’t Eric be sad not to have a tree for Christmas?” I said.  Gary shrugged.  Obviously, it doesn’t make any difference to him, but I feel a duty to make a nice Christmas for everyone.  Shouldn’t that include a tree?

I get that from my mother.  She worked hard to make Christmas special for her family, something I never appreciated until I became a mother.  What used to be a fun holiday became a stressful task with a firm deadline.  There were little people with great expectations, and I couldn’t let them down.  But it was always worth the effort - the kids putting their special ornaments on the tree, seeing their faces on Christmas morning when they saw their presents under the tree, the whole family sitting around the tree unwrapping gifts, the kids playing with their new toys next to the tree.  See?  It all revolves around the tree.  How could we not have a tree?

I admit that in recent years, our Christmases have been out of the ordinary.  Our boys are now thirtysomething men.  Greg lives two thousand miles away and rarely gets back for Christmas.  There are no grandchildren whose eyes light up on Christmas morning.  It’s become a low-key adult affair unbound by tradition except for the crab dip, sandbars, almond roca and lottery scratchers in our stockings.  We have a nice meal, then Gary naps while Eric and I tackle a puzzle and watch something on TV.  One year we watched a whole season of “Dexter”.   I call it the Christmas of Murder and Mayhem.

So, yes, we buck tradition – we are the ones who have Chicago deep-dish pizza for Thanksgiving dinner after all - but to go without a Christmas tree?  Really?

I long ago ditched the real trees in favor of pre-lighted artificial ones.  The last real tree we had was twenty years ago when my sister and her family came from Colorado to spend the holidays with us and to surprise my mother for her 75th birthday.  That was one magnificent tree, made most memorable by the fact that our whole family gathered around it.

That’s the key, isn’t it?  It isn’t really about the trappings of Christmas.  It’s about the experiences shared with loved ones.  Gary would nod in agreement and tell me to eighty-six the tree.  But wouldn’t Eric be disappointed?

On Thanksgiving I asked Eric where he thought the tree should go.  Without hesitation, he said, “Just forget the tree.”

Gary threw both arms up over his head in victory.  “Yes!  See?” he said.

I felt defeated.  Had all my Christmas efforts been in vain?  Didn’t they care about any of it?

Then Eric said, “But, Mom, there’s no mantle on this fireplace.  Where will we hang the stockings?”

Ah, Christmas lives, with or without a tree.  But I’d sure better find a way to hang those stockings, the ones with the lottery scratchers.   
            

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Unpredictable


by Susan Cameron

Unpredictable, that's what life is. We do the best we can with our plans and projections, but there we are -- driving along on our usual route on an ordinary day, when an incoming meteor blasts through the clouds, a hurtling fireball screaming through a previously untroubled sky, and it explodes and sends shock waves that shatter our windows and send us reeling. We like to imagine we're in control, but -- meteors happen.

How about the friends who blow hot and cold, or the spouse who does the same? A career that rolls along, predictable as the tides, until a tsunami of layoffs comes crashing onto the beach? The shadow on the X-ray? The money invested with Bernie Madoff? The Enron pension?

I read the news, check the bank balances, get the latest news on my stock holdings, go three times a year to www.annualcreditreport.com, fix all the problems that I can see or anticipate; but despite all my proactivity, there isn't one damn thing I can do about life's meteors.

Susan Cameron
copyright 2013

Monday, November 11, 2013

Love Street - Cassie and The Webers


by Liz Zuercher

 I broke my biggest fattest rule when the Webers first walked into the Bella Vista sales office:  Never get personally involved with a customer. 

I want my buyers to feel like I’m their friend.  But, even though I really care about them, I keep a professional distance, because after they move into their new house, our paths will rarely cross again.  If we do run into each other, we will have a sincerely cordial conversation where they will fill me in on their lives – how old the kids are, if they have a new job or a new dog or a new baby.  They will ask me where I’m working now and if I’ve gotten married yet, since most of them wanted to fix me up with their good friend Bill or Jack or Dave or Paul.  I’ll say no I’m not married yet and I’m working at the new neighborhood up the road a ways.  Then we’ll say it’s been great seeing you – and we’ll really mean it – and we’ll go our separate ways.  That’s the way I like it. Close, but not too close.  Professional.  No one gets hurt that way.

But when the Webers came in the front door, the rule went out the window.  Yes, they were physically beautiful – young, blond, tanned like Barbie and Ken – but the beauty ran deep in both of them.  Somehow you could tell right away that they were good people.  They radiated love, happiness and sincerity.  I know, they sound too sugary sweet, like one-dimensional Disney characters, but I couldn’t see anything not to like about them.           

As beautiful as John and Kristen were, their daughter, Missy, was the one who stole my heart.  John held Missy, her head resting on his shoulder, her fine blond hair damp against her forehead.  She rubbed sleep out of her eyes and kept quiet while I talked to her parents.  I felt Missy’s eyes on me.  Then she reached over and touched the single carved sterling silver bead of my necklace and said, “Ball.”

That gentle touch of her warm fingers sent a shock of regret through my whole body.  It took me back over twenty-five years to the baby boy I’d given up for adoption. It had seemed like the right thing to do.  I had no husband, no boyfriend, and no way to raise a baby. I thought I had plenty of time for babies later, when the situation was better.  But that time still hadn’t come, and my doctor had just said my childbearing years were almost gone.  My insides ached.  I held back the tears that threatened to betray my feelings to these perfect strangers, and I put one of my best salesgirl smiles in place.

“Yes.  It’s a silver ball,” I said to Missy, not taking her hand away from the necklace.

“Pwetty,” she said, moving her tiny hand to my cheek, stroking it softly.

“I’m sorry,” John said, taking Missy’s hand in his own and kissing it.

“No problem” I said, even though I knew right then I had a big problem.  I was already well on my way to breaking that big fat rule of mine.  I was head over heels in love with Missy Weber and her parents, and I would never be able to keep a professional distance from them. 

Most of the time when I meet a couple like the Webers who seem to have the world on a string, something turns out to be wrong with them.  They’re beautiful on the outside, but ugly on the inside.  They make unreasonable demands or they are flakes who can’t do anything in a timely manner or they lie about their income.  The ones you fall for as customers can also break your heart when they can’t qualify for a loan or when they decide to buy somewhere else after you’ve invested weeks of your life with them or they can’t make a decision to save their souls.  There are so many ways the patina of a perfect buyer can be tarnished, that I tend to be wary of the ones who seem too good to be true.  I’ve found I need to protect myself that way.

But John and Kristin Weber turned out to be kind and decisive and cooperative and honest and just plain fun.  Even though my years of experience still fanned a little inner flame of wariness, I gave in to them and believed they were the real thing, a family I wished were my own.

They got on the priority list right after the grand opening, but unlike the hordes of greedy investors, they didn’t want just any home as long as it was in Phase 1.  They got on the list early so they could work their way to the top by the time Phase 3 was released and have a good shot at buying Lot 52, the Plan 4 on a big pie shaped lot - the one on a cul de sac with the ocean and hillside views.  They wanted the big yard for Missy and their golden retriever, Riley.  They wanted the biggest house for all the children they were going to have.  And they wanted the ocean and hillside views for themselves to enjoy when the children were grown and gone and they had time to sit on the deck together and watch the sunset.  They were the exception in those days.  They weren’t looking for a quick profit in two years.  They were looking for a home, a place to raise their family, to create memories, to grow old together.  Such a breath of fresh air.

They sold their townhome early and moved into an apartment, so they’d have their down payment money ready.  That was another way they were different from most of the customers then.  Instead of financing their home to the hilt, they were putting 20% down.  So responsible, so solid.  The only blemish I could find with the Webers was Kristen’s low credit score, but it wasn’t because she had been reckless with her money.  She’d had some serious medical issues before she and John married, and even with insurance, the bills were more than she could handle.  But John’s credit was excellent and his job even better, so he was able to qualify for the mortgage by himself.  Everything was on track.

Every weekend while their house was being built, John, Kristen and Missy came to see me in the sales office.  We’d jump in the golf cart and drive down to their lot and stand at the edge of the wide back yard and stare out at the ocean.  I was always holding Missy, because she always reached for me when the cart stopped in front of their new home.  I began to feel like I was part of the Weber family, like I would be spending time with them for years to come, long after I’d closed all the escrows in Bella Vista and moved on to another community.  When Kristen got pregnant, they came to tell me, Missy sporting a “Big Sister” tee shirt, so excited about the baby on the way.  When Kristen miscarried, she called me to cry with me, to warn me not to say anything about the baby to Missy.

I had to call John right after the miscarriage to confirm his loan arrangements.  When he said he had changed lenders and he was financing 100% instead of 80%, something inside me flip-flopped.

“I thought you were putting 20% down,” I said.

“We were,” he said.  “But I changed my mind.”

Something about the way he said that – “I changed my mind” – raised a red flag.  Had steadfast, reasonable John been bitten by the investment bug?  Did Kristen know?

“Are you sure?” I said.  It wasn’t my place to advise him about this, but I wanted to scream a warning at the top of my lungs.

“Yep,” he said, an excitement in his voice that scared me.  “Let’s do this!”

I’ll always remember how I felt when I hung up the phone – like someone had just told me my child was sick and no one knew the cure.  Helpless.  But hanging on to a slim hope that somehow it would all work out anyway.  When I look back at everything that happened, I go to this one moment.  I should have said something to change his mind.  I should have protected my family. 

Monday, October 14, 2013

Love Street - Emily, Marla and Mitchell

by Liz Zuercher

Since it's been a few months since my last Love Street post, I'll take this opportunity to catch up and introduce three more residents of Love Street - Emily Wilson, Marla Winterberg and Mitchell Roberts.


Emily

Emily Wilson pulled out of her garage slowly, looking all around for children who might be playing in the cul de sac.  She’d chosen her lot because the yard was small and the floor plan was the one she liked.  Being on a cul de sac hadn’t been a consideration, though she had thought it might make for a quieter location without much traffic.  She’d been wrong about that.  The kids at this end of the street all played in the cul de sac as if it were a grassy park, and the parents limited their supervision to putting up an orange Children-at-Play sign in the shape of a stick figure in mid-stride. 

Across the street Jessie and Chad Grissom had spread out an assortment of large gaudy primary-colored plastic toys that were never put away at night.  The kids had built forts in the dirt and threw rocks around regularly, so that it looked like a giant sandbox from the front door to the street.  They hadn’t mowed the grass parkway strip since they moved in and weeds had overtaken the little patch of grass in front of their house.

If that weren’t bad enough, Emily had the neighbor from hell next door.  Eddie Petrocelli had plunked that outrageous alligator in front of his house the day he moved in, and while it had been mildly amusing when Emily thought it was there for a day while Eddie unpacked, the longer it remained, the angrier she became.  She had asked Eddie politely to move it to the back yard, but he had laughed in her face.

“Don’t you think he’s kinda cute?” Eddie had said.

“No,” she’d said.

“Tough,” Eddie replied, turning his back on her.

To add insult to injury, Eddie had turned his entire garage into a gym, with weights and a treadmill and stepper and elliptical machine.  He’d put mirrors along one wall of the garage and that rubber sport court stuff on the floor.  Then he’d put in a sound system and a flat screen TV so he could entertain himself while he exercised.  If he could have kept to himself while he used his gym that would have been okay, but he turned the volume up on the surround sound and the hard rock beat rumbled through her house at all hours.  When she’d tried to ask him to turn down the sound, he’d said “Sure, Em,” and cranked up the volume.  What a jerk. 

She couldn’t imagine that other neighbors weren’t annoyed with him, too, so she’d asked Dan across the street about it one day when they were putting out their trashcans at the same time.  Dan had said a group of the neighbors decided he would approach Eddie about the alligator and see what could be done.  They’d tackle the matter of the music once they saw how it went with the alligator.  So far Emily hadn’t seen any results and wondered if Dan had gathered his courage yet.

All this was on Emily’s mind as she backed out of her driveway, glanced over toward Eddie’s house and saw the new plastic critters that had joined the alligator overnight.  And the tacky little fence.  And the picnic table.  Good grief.  What next?

She was beginning to regret her move to Bella Vista.  In some respects it had been good for her.  She was tucked away in a place her ex-husband would never look for her, a place he’d never expect she’d want to be.  In truth, she didn’t want to be here, but it was so far from the kind of surroundings she was used to that it made it the perfect hiding place.  And she needed to be hidden.  She’d changed her name, changed her job and moved to escape him.  As long as she kept a low profile and had an extensive security system in her home, she hoped she’d be safe.  She hadn’t made friends in the neighborhood on purpose, not wanting anyone to know too much about her.  She’d just as soon they wonder who in the world lived in that house.  But Eddie Petrocelli was making it difficult for Emily to keep to herself.  He was threatening her sanctuary and she was afraid she was going to have to come out of her shell and join forces with the neighbors.


Marla

Across the street from Emily’s house, Marla Winterberg sat on her sheltered front balcony in her favorite redwood Adirondack chair with the green and white striped cushions and watched the comings and goings on the street.  She liked this place because she could see everything and everyone on the whole street, but no one could see her in the shadows of the Tuscan style stucco arches. 

Her attention had been drawn to Eddie’s house across the street when Emily’s car had stopped midway out of the driveway.  Marla watched as Emily got out of the car and with hands on her hips stood looking at her neighbor’s yard.  That’s what made Marla notice the new assortment of critters that had come to accompany the alligator in Eddie’s yard.  And there was a new little fence and a wooden picnic table.  Cute, she thought.  Who would have thought such a macho guy would like all those little animals. 

Eddie must have put those out there in the dead of night, because Marla knew they hadn’t been there at ten o’clock last night when she and Edgar took their two little Shih-Tzus, Punkin and Pie, out for a walk before bedtime.  Punkin especially liked the alligator as a place to relieve herself, which she had done last night right there on the alligator’s foot, so Marla would have noticed if all that other stuff had been there then.  Punkin would have a field day with all this new stuff. 

Marla wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about with the alligator.  It was just a silly little joke, she was sure, but people were getting tired of seeing it and had started to talk in groups at the mailbox in the evening or on Wednesdays when they put out the trash.  She wondered if anyone had whispered about the ceramic frog she had at the front door.  It was so cute.  When someone came close to it, it would say, “Ribid, ribid”.  It made Marla smile.  Willis thought it was stupid, but she liked it and didn’t care what Willis said.

Eddie reminded Marla of her son, George, who lived all the way across the country in New York City.  Eddie was bigger than George and had a darker complexion, but she figured they were about the same age and they both had a certain bravado about them, a swagger that she found appealing.  Willis, of course, had never had swagger, and Marla wasn’t sure where their son came by his.  Maybe from Marla’s father.  Now there was a man’s man.  He certainly had swagger.

Anyway, after Emily got back in her car and drove off, Eddie came out of the house and walked to the curb.  He turned and looked back at his house, nodding his head.  He looked from side to side, then up to the little Juliet balcony above the garage and went back in the house.  Pretty soon Marla saw the Juliet balcony door open and Eddie set out a stepladder and mounted a video camera on the light fixture beside the door, pointing it down to his yard.  When he had it where he wanted it, he took the ladder inside and came back with a full-sized painted carousel horse, which he positioned on the tiny balcony with its front legs resting on the railing as if it were ready to jump onto the driveway.  Eddie went back inside and closed the door behind him.

Marla sat and watched a little more, wondering what Eddie had up his sleeve next.  After a while he came out the front door again, stood by the alligator and waved his arms up at the camera.  He went back inside, then appeared on the Juliet balcony once more, adjusting the camera.  After several trial runs with the camera placement, Eddie must have gotten it where he wanted it, because he didn’t appear again until the garage door opened, the music started up and Marla could watch Eddie working out in his gym.  She liked when Eddie worked out.  She liked watching him move to the music, flexing his muscles as he hefted the weights.  She liked the heavy bass of the music.  She felt the beat of it in her chest.

Mitchell

At the other end of the street, Mitchell Roberts stood out on the deck off his master bedroom, coffee cup in hand, looking out at the dry hills.  He liked to start and end his workday on this deck.  This was why he’d bought this house in the first place, other than the investment value.  As a single man in his forties with no plans to marry, he didn’t need this much house.  What he did need was a place that was quiet and secluded, but part of a larger community at the same time.  He’d thrown a lot of money at it, but he had a lot of money that needed spending.  It was best to spend it on things that were easily visible.  To his surprise, he was beginning to take pride in the house.

He felt a waft of dry air against his cheek and it made him shiver a little bit.  He was afraid of one thing in this location.  He was afraid of fire.  When he bought the house, the hills were a riot of green and yellow and he never imagined it being anything but full of life.  He’d watched the deer play on the meadow across the way and he’d seen the coyotes lope by at dawn and dusk in their search for food.  Then he moved in and the summer heat came.  The vegetation died and the hills turned from green and yellow to brown.  Now the landscape was gray and tinder dry, and he worried that the smallest spark would set off an inferno that would engulf his neighborhood and destroy his beautiful quiet home.  He’d taken extra precautions, from special sprinklers to fortifying the eaves to installing a pool and a special fire hose that could suck water from the pool if necessary.  He was ready to take a stand if need be.

It felt like the Santa Ana winds might be kicking up, and that scared Mitchell most of all.  A power line could blow down and a spark could start a fire.  A carelessly tossed cigarette butt could be fanned into an inferno, with sparks blowing across hills and houses to neighborhoods far from the flash point.   The exhaust of a motorcycle illegally riding the hiking trails could…well this could drive him crazy, he thought.  He’d done what he could to protect his property.

He leaned against the railing and watched as a young boy with a camouflage hat sneaked across behind the neighbor’s fence, stopped at the top of the hill then started running headlong down the hill.  About halfway down, the boy tripped on something and catapulted head over heels down the rest of the hill.  Mitchell thought the boy might be hurt, but he jumped up and pumped his fist in the air.    Mitchell grimaced as he watched the kid tug at his pants then aim a stream of urine at a nearby bush.  Apparently, the coyotes and mountain lions weren’t the only wildlife in these hills.  People should watch their children more closely, he thought, as he downed the last of his coffee and went off to work.



Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Scientology Strikes Again
by Nancy Grossman-Samuel

The Church of Scientology sent me a Parishioner Statement on Saturday. It has a balance due for training of $1.50.

I’m not sure what I’ve been trained on unless it’s how to not answer a call from a number that I don’t know. I did take classes from them way back in the 70s, but since then, and up until about three years or so ago, our relationship has been mercifully silent. Then they started to call and no matter how many times I tell them I am not interested, they try to talk me into believing that I am missing out.

I dutifully throw out every piece of mail I get from them whether it is a mass mailing or a personal letter, but I opened up this invoice because I thought – “What the hell??? An invoice for WHAT?!?!?…” and then realized they had to do something to get a response from me – so I put a nice handwritten note on the invoice and am mailing it back. My “nice” note, which really IS nice says “Have no idea what this is for, so I assume it has something to do with the enclosed video – so please accept it back with my complements, Nancy.”

After a call years ago, a young woman named Brittany sent me a video that I was told I really MUST watch about how the materials of the church had been changed illegally and how the things I was taught were so very wrong and how I had been treated was also wrong, but now everything was right. Briefly, the way they “lost” me was that I got badgered, after taking a class with them, to join the Sea Organization – the main brainwashing branch of the church. I had just finished giving a rousing speech after having graduated from one of their self-directed classes – everyone got to get up and talk after they graduated – and because it was such a wonderful talk (I am assuming), they decided I had great skill as a future Scientology brainwasher!
It took them 3 hours of talking and cajoling but I signed the papers. What was I thinking? Obviously, I was NOT thinking.

I went up north to “say goodbye” to my friends and family – or at least that is how it felt, and through a series of events decided NOT to go back to Scientology at all. Surprisingly, but thankfully, they never called or wrote to find out what happened to me, and for about 5 years I could not even drive by the building where I’d taken the classes.

Back to the video – I watched about 45 minutes of it and decided that I couldn't care less and it wasn't at all compelling or interesting to me. I called Brittany back and told her as much. After what was probably a very nice and civil conversation I think she asked if she could call in the future, and moron me said “yes.”

I now wonder If I’d just said “FUCK NO AND DON’T YOU EVER CALL ME AGAIN!!!” if I would have been relieved of this monkey on my back!

Along with the video I included a letter that says:
“Please stop sending me mail and calling me. I appreciate that you think pursuing the teachings of Scientology is a wonderful option for me. Please trust me enough to tell you that I am not interested, and know that the more you send me mail and call me, the more badgered I feel, the more resentful and angry I feel, and the less I want ANYTHING to do with Scientology.

If I knew how, or if it were worth my time to find out how to do it, I would just block your phone numbers, but it’s easier just not to answer any calls from phone numbers I do not know, or that actually say The Church of Scientology.

I really don’t know how I can be any clearer. If I choose at some point in the future to pursue Scientological learnings, I know where to find you.

Thank you in advance for respecting my wishes and taking me off your mailing lists and phone call lists.
Sincerely,

Nancy Grossman Samuel

P.S. The latest person who has been calling is Phil (note: I don’t want to get sued, so I’m not including his whole name here). Please include him in this communication. “

The interesting thing about Phil is that he called me after I told Brittany to back off. He called because he figured that Brittany had not been clear enough in her communication to make me understand what she was saying. Did he really think that that was a great opening comment?!?!? My initial reaction was “Please tell Brittany that I will never call her again and that she had better never call me again.” He tried to convince me of the wonder and fabulousness of Scientology and getting him off the phone was like trying to pull off a blood sucking creature. I assumed he would not call me back, but alas, he has, but I have not answered. He sounds almost desperate in his messages. I wonder if they are whipping these people for not getting me back into the fold. If I somehow disappear some day, don't rule out kidnapping! These people are like ants. They show like an army of ants with their calls and letters, and unfortunately I have yet to find a P&M Pest Control for Scientologists. Perhaps I need to learn how to be effectively rude.

What really worries me is how bent out of shape I feel when I get these calls and letters. I don’t know why I can’t just laugh it off as I throw away the letters and not answer the calls. What worries me is what it might mean that I am so reactive. Does it mean that I SHOULD go back and take classes? What if they’re right? What if there is something there for me? Am I really that insecure that I think maybe my answer lies within their unsavory walls?


I’d better get myself a life that really does feel fulfilling and wonderful and do it quickly before I do something really stupid.

Monday, September 9, 2013

Flirting with Food Rehab

               by Susan Matthewson
               My diet is so terrible my family wants to commit me to food rehab where I will be force fed organic vegetables and fruits to cleanse my body of sugar, fat, grease, and Der Wienerschnitzel hotdogs.
                I eat so poorly I have no idea why I’m still alive. I often have a bowl of buttered popcorn and a coke for dinner or a slice of lemon meringue pie and a glass of milk for breakfast (thank you for noticing the milk).
                I blame my diet on my Southern family and roots. I’ve been trying for years to blame them for all my failures and weaknesses and it’s gratifying to finally have found something to stick them with. I just hate having to acknowledge my own responsibility for everything that’s gone wrong in my life; it tends to be so depressing. But my diet is definitely my family’s fault and they can’t escape blame on this one.
                You see, I grew up with a father from Texas, a mother from Louisiana, and a live-in grandmother from Texas. It was a house in which no one knew that any other kind of cooking but Southern cooking existed. FYI, instead of the traditional five food groups that most of the country adheres to, Southerners have their own special food groups, six not five, and they include salt, gravy, bacon grease, sugar, butter, and fried stuff. Southerners don’t have a food pyramid; they have a food square because every group is equal…doesn’t matter how many servings a day you get of each one as long as you get plenty.
                Our family’s foundational food was bacon grease. My mother cooked everything with bacon grease derived from the two fried eggs and two strips of bacon she cooked for my father every morning. She kept a five-pound Folger’s coffee can of drippings by the stove so she could plop a spoonful handily into everything she made and most of what she made was fried—friend pork chops, fried chicken, chicken-fried steak, fried fish, fried potatoes.
                In addition, my father only liked two vegetables—black-eyed peas and spinach, both out of a can and, of course, both simmered in bacon grease. The only fruits he ate were strawberries and bananas…IF they were sliced and sprinkled with sugar on top of ice cream.
                I didn’t know vegetables came any other way but in cans until I was an adult. I thought people who bought that leafy green stuff in the produce section used it to make their own canned vegetables and were just too dumb to know that Green Giant and Del Monte had already put it in cans on Aisle 6.
                To complicate things, my Texas grandmother—who cloned Paula Deen by the way—baked a fresh dessert from scratch every single day. Her repertoire included German chocolate cake drizzled with a luscious butter/sugar/caramel glaze, thick, creamy chocolate custard pie with a four-inch meringue, bread pudding so rich it made your eyes water, devil’s food cake with a scrumptious crushed pineapple icing, Tollhouse cookies, and…well, and, on and on and on. Of course, bacon grease doesn’t work for desserts so grandma’s choice of grease was Crisco, that white, hydrogenated fat that just screams out “Heart attack! Heart attack! Heart attack!”  Our family crest/coat of arms features a can of Crisco perched on a throne of sugar cubes surrounded by sticks of butter.
                Concerns about my diet reached critical mass after my daughter and her husband bought an organic farm in Oregon where they grow more than 50 varieties of herbs, grains, vegetables, and fruits. Ah, yes, I know…the irony…me, with an organic farmer daughter.
                Once when visiting the farm, my daughter asked me to go pick some kale from the field for dinner. Panicked because I didn’t know what kale looked like, I whispered to my four-year-old grandson, “Everett, come show grandma what kale looks like.” I managed to harvest some kale, but not until after he yelled at me in outrage, “Grandma, you’re standing in the onions! You can’t do that!” Well, who knew…weeds, kale, onions…it all looked the same to me. If it didn’t have whipped cream on top or was slathered in butter, I couldn’t recognize it as food.
                The only time I eat healthy is at the farm because all they eat are fresh vegetables and fruit, locally raised grass-fed beef and lamb, organic chicken, homemade goat cheese, and fresh goat milk straight from the goat. There are no Oreo cookies, no gravy, no bacon grease, no soda pop, and no fried stuff. I start shaking and go into withdrawal because there’s just no sugar or grease there to fill me up. Remember that scene in Gone With The Wind when Scarlet O’Hara lifts an old dried, stale root vegetable up to the sky and vows that she’ll never be hungry again. Well, every time I leave the farm, I speed down that little farm road to the nearest grocery store, grab a Snickers bar, hold it up to the sky, and swear to God that I’ll never be without sugar again.
                However, now that I can identify kale, I am trying to incorporate it into my diet to pacify my family and because kale is the new wonder drug. Nutritionists swear that you will live forever and be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound if you eat kale. It hasn’t been easy. I tried kale baked, boiled, steamed, and blended, but it always tasted like moldy grass cuttings. Then one day on a whim and in a never-say-die spirit, I plopped a bunch of kale in a skillet, threw in a half-pound of bacon, and fried it all up. Then, I slathered it with butter, loaded on salt and pepper, and, man oh man, it was great. And the bonus—I fried my pork chops in the same skillet in the left-over bacon grease. There's hardly anything a little bacon grease can't help.
                I’m going to try chard next…as soon as my grandson shows me what it looks like.
               


Monday, August 12, 2013

This Could Be The Last Time, I Don't Know...

by Nancy Grossman-Samuel
             
            Margaret is looking around the room as if she doesn't recognize anything in it. She gingerly sits at her desk with its random and haphazard piles and shakes her head. “Shit.” She sighs deeply. “I might as well just give up. I’m 60 and my life is never going to change.” Glancing from pile to pile and stack to stack she says, “It’s always just going to be me, alone, with piles of shit. No friends, no purpose, just paper, books, and junk I must think holds the secrets of the universe.”
She knows she is again being overly dramatic. She has friends, and a life, but she, like Pig Pen, the character in Peanuts, is constantly trailing a cloud of stuff. She’s tried to get the stuff under control for years – since birth probably – her cross to bear. “Humph,” she says as she remembers her mother telling her college roommates not to let her have a chair because it would just disappear under debris. And she had been right. Within days, no chair, just a pile, mostly clothes, that looked like it was floating off the ground. Good thing her roommates didn't really care. No one except her mother really did. At least no one except her mother had ever said anything, and now, even though she had been dead for years, her mother's voice continued inside Margaret’s head. “I’m 60!” she shouted, “why do I still give a flying fuck about what my mother says – inside my head no less – she’s not even here!”
“Hey,” came a sleepy voice from the room down the hall. “No swearing!! And grandma is still here. I saw her ghost floating down the hall on my way to bed last night.”
“It’s not noon yet, go back to sleep!!”
She heard Sean laugh, and the sounds of Green Day, or Maroon Five, or one of those groups came drifting from the speakers in his room.
I’m going to die in this chair with piles around me. Sean and his sisters will come in with a dumpster and get rid of it all. Why am I holding on to so much crap? I will never read all these books, I will never again look at the majority of these papers even once I scan them in, and the clothes in my closet that will never touch my body, could clothe a small country – well, small city, maybe, and even the ones that do, the meager handful of things all my friends are sick of seeing me wear, will go to Goodwill when I'm gone! I really should just get rid of it all now before the kids have to. But then, I spent years cleaning up after them, maybe turn around is fair play. I just wish I could toss this stuff without feeling like I’m betraying someone! This is the familiar liturgy that goes through her mind pretty much daily, with and without the child revenge portion.
       She had done his laundry that day and found an old tee shirt of hers that her son had adopted – an old Rolling Stones tee that she had never gotten rid of, but also hadn't worn in thirty-plus years. It had been hiding in a box until her son rummaged around the garage one day and came out wearing it.
       She felt a pang that she should still have it herself until she slapped herself upside the head and remembered that it is better on his back now, then in a box in the garage until after she was dead – at least he was enjoying it. He even thought his mother a little cooler for having once worn a Rolling Stones tee shirt – and he felt that owning and wearing that shirt made him seem a little cooler too.
      So maybe the junk is okay? She allowed herself to question. Maybe it isn't the end of the world. Maybe it’s just my old stories that have no place in my life any more. “But I really don’t WANT all this shit all over the place!!” She screamed.
     “So toss it,” came Sean’s voice.
     “Mind your own business!” she called back. “I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to myself.”
     “Should I call a doctor?”
     “Ha ha. Go get your clothes. I washed them. They’re folded on the ironing board.”
     “Cool. Did you iron my shirts too?” asked his smiling face as he came around the corner to her office.
     “As if! If you want them ironed. Iron them yourself!”
     “But mom.”
     “Jeeze Sean, you’re 21, you shouldn't even be bringing your laundry here to do any more.  Well, you can keep bringing your laundry if you keep coming to visit, but I should not be doing it!”
     “I would have done it. You just don’t like it sitting by the garage door.”
     “You’re right. I didn't have to do it. Next time, you’ll do it yourself.” She called to his receding footsteps, proud of herself, but knowing in her heart that she could easily wind up doing it again, though truth be told, he did do his own laundry, sometimes. “Ugggg,” she said almost under her breath. “I am such a push over. I really need to stop doing that. I need to let him do things for himself.”
     “Did you say something, Mom? You’re mumbling!”
     “Not talking to you,” she said in a sing-song.
     “You really need to get married again. You’re talking to yourself too much!”
     “Thanks for the advice. I happen to like my company, and you keep coming back, so I must not be so horrible to be around.”
     “Nope,” said Sean heading back up stairs. “I got my laundry! Brought it up myself!”
     “Gold star for you bud."
     “Hey Mom, you ever going to clear off that desk?”
     “No. I’m going to let you do it when I die. Make you go through every piece just in case there is something important.”
     “There isn't,” he called from his room.
     He’s probably right, she thought. There’s nothing on this desk that is going to bring forward world peace or a cure for cancer, or even a small or medium sized windfall. So maybe I should just dump it all. But she knew she would not.
     So, once again, she clears a small space in front of her to which she can drag a few pieces of paper or random items at a time, and ever the hopeful optimist thinks this could be the last time. She starts to sing the lyrics, “This could be the last time/This could be the last time/May be the last time/I don’t know/Don’t know…," and turns to her Apple computer, opens Pandora and creates a new station – The Rolling Stones. But it isn't “The Last Time,” playing – it’s The Beatles – “Come Together.”
     “Yes!” she shouts and then sings matching the Beatles staccato, “One thing I can tell you is/You got to be free/Come together, right now/Over me.”
     She sighs, picked up a receipt, and says “Oh look – I was free to buy a dozen greeting cards I’ll probably never send. At least they were on sale!”
     The sounds came wailing from the Goal Zero speaker she’d gotten at Costco and for which there was a receipt around here somewhere. “’Got to be good looking cause she so hard to see…’
     Sean comes walking back down the hall wearing the Rolling Stones tee shirt and holey jeans. “Oh yeah Mom! Rock out!”
     And she did.

Monday, August 5, 2013

Turning Point

by Susan Matthewson

Eve still listened for the sound of his car, the sound of the garage door going up every afternoon at 6, even though Michael had been dead for six months now. It didn’t seem to matter where she was or what she was doing, she somehow ended up at home before 6 p.m. every day, sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the mudroom door, believing that this time the garage door would go up and he would walk through that door and life would pick up where it left off six months ago. She’d even moved the kitchen wall clock over beside the entrance door from the garage so she could watch the door and the clock at the same time.

She stared at the clock, watching the minute hand tick past the 12 to 6:01, then 6:05, then 6:15, and still nobody came through that door. She pushed herself up from the table as though she needed the leverage to lift off the chair like some old lady with creaky joints and arthritis who needed a boost. She was only 55, too young to feel so weary and lethargic, too young, she thought, to be a widow, too young to feel so hopeless, so lonely, so alone.
           
She started to prepare dinner, dinner alone now, so it was always soup or a sandwich, something simple that took no time or fuss. She no longer had the ability to plan a meal, even to think what to cook. She opened a can of tuna fish and walked to the sink to drain the liquid. She stared over the sink to the backyard at the neglected flowerbeds, the leaf-strewn patio, the yellowing potted plants placed here and there. Everything was straggly and overgrown. She sighed, thinking, I must do something about that…prune, cut back, and sweep. I must, I must, I must…the musts just went on and on.

“Ugh,” she said out loud. “I hate this. I hate this so much,” and then she picked up the dishrag folded neatly across the faucet, turned around, and threw it at the door to the garage, that door that was firmly shut, that simply was not going to open, that no one was going to walk through.

She opened the fridge to get the jar of mayonnaise out and then remembered that she was out. Great, she thought no mayo, no mustard, so no tuna fish salad. But she’d gone to the grocery store yesterday, hadn’t she? Isn’t that what she’d gone for—to stock up on mayo, mustard, other staples? What had happened? Where was the mayo? What had she done?

It was starting to scare her how often this happened--how she couldn’t remember from one day to the next what she’d done. She sat down at the table. Remember she demanded and rapped on the table. Remember what you did yesterday. She rubbed her forehead. What had happened between yesterday and today, right now, this minute?

The grocery store. Yes, she had gone to the grocery store. She’d been wandering down the cereal aisle and had automatically reached for the box of shredded wheat that Michael loved. She’d looked at the box in her hand and then time seemed to drop away. She’d stood there, lost in memory, hearing Michael teasing about her less than healthy eating habits--she who would grab a cup of coffee in the morning and then maybe a cookie or two while he sat at the table eating his shredded wheat and orange juice while reading the paper. He’d glance up with an amused smile as she grabbed a cookie and shake his head, so she’d dramatically take a huge bite of cookie and wink at him.

She might be still standing at the grocery store with that cereal box in her hand, lost memory  had not Tina Denovo come around the corner and nearly run her down.

“Eve, my goodness,” Tina said. “I haven’t seen you in such a long time. You haven’t been in yoga class for months now. How are you? How are you getting along?  I know it’s a tough time for you right now.”

Eve had blinked, put the box back on the shelf, and tried to clear her head.

 “Oh, Tina,” she said, “I, uh, I’m great, really great. I’ve just been busy, so busy. I’m coming back to class soon now, just as soon as…” and then she hadn’t been able to think of how to complete that thought. Just as soon as what…what was it she was so busy doing. She had stared back at Tina, shrugged her shoulders, and said, “Well, soon anyway, very soon.”

 Then Eve had stood there, smiling with not a single thought in her head as to what to say next.
           
Tina patted her on the arm. “It’s good to see you Eve. Do come back. It’ll be good for you to see friends. Come this week and we’ll all go out to lunch afterwards.”
           
“Yes, yes I will,” Eve said and then watched Tina move away down the aisle. And then what? Eve rubbed her eyes. What had she done then? Oh, yes, she could see it now...she’d just left the cart with only a bar of soap and a package of cookies in it right there in the aisle, turned around, and walked out.

But what did I do after that? What did I do from yesterday afternoon at the grocery store until right now, this very minute? She hadn’t a clue.

Okay, she thought, slow down and retrace your steps. She’d left the grocery store, she could remember that now, but she didn’t remember getting in the car. She gasped and ran to the door to the garage and opened it, convinced she must have left the car in the parking lot, wondering how she’d gotten home. But the car was there, her old reliable Ford Explorer, hunkered down like an old gray bear, sitting right beside Michael’s sturdy little red Toyota Camry.

But something else had happened, something just flitting around the edges of her memory now. She’d done something awful, something completely out of character, something that shocked her.

“Oh, my God,” she said with a disgusted shake of her head as the memory hit her. She’d been walking to the car in a daze, not really knowing what she was doing, just compelled to leave the store, to get out of there. A young couple had been walking toward her, smiling and laughing, holding hands, looking at each other. They were so wrapped up in each other they didn't notice her. She’d suddenly been furious and without thinking she purposefully, blindly, just walked right between them, making them break their handhold and part so she could get by.

Well, excuuuuse me,” the man had said, as the woman’s mouth fell open in dismay. Eve had paid no attention, didn’t apologize, didn't flinch, didn't turn around, just kept walking.
            
She started to sob and then choked it back. She had to leave.She had to get out of this house, away from the weight of memory. She ran to the bedroom, grabbed a suitcase, and started cramming clothes into it.
           
An hour later after a stop at the bank and the gas station, Eve was on the highway heading north with no idea where she was going. She could see the mountains on the horizon, faintly blue and shimmering in the sunshine. They seemed to beckon to her so she kept driving toward them without any clear idea of where she was going. She didn’t want to stop for a map because she worried that if she stopped, she’d turn around and go home. She felt rattled, anxious, sweaty, and on the verge of tears but having to concentrate on her driving was the only thing keeping her together at the moment. If she stopped, she feared she’d begin to think, and she didn’t want to think right now, she just wanted to keep driving.
           
She came to a conjunction of highways and several green directional signs, one with an arrow pointing to the west that said Five Lakes Basin. She took the exit. Five lakes. That’s where she’d go. Lakes had cabins. She’d find a cabin. Cabins don’t have garages with automatic door openers, there’d be no ticking clock on the wall. That’s all she wanted right now…a place with no garage door opener and no ticking clock.

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

The Scent of Long-Gone Lilacs

Susan Cameron, copyright 2013


Shut your eyes the next time you smell freshly-cut grass -- shut them and let that scent take you back in time and space. Where does your memory take you?

As for me -- there I was, pushing the rusty old lawnmower through the ankle-high grass on a warm, humid summer's day in Detroit. We didn't own the fancy kind with an engine. Who would waste good money on an expensive thing like that when there was a healthy twelve year old girl to push the old one? It was my job to mow the lawn, and I (sometimes) liked it. The front lawn was pretty basic, just two patches of grass flanking the front walkway to the stoop, but the garage-less back yard was a different thing entirely. I'd push the mower down the skinny walkway alongside the house and enter a world of scent and color.

I had to be careful not to mow too close to the border of lilies of the valley, so aromatic, their waxy creamy blossoms arching over the edge too near my whirring blades. I'd mow around the sun-dappled Rose of Sharon tree just as carefully; I didn't want to bump into it and disturb the bees humming deep in the pinky-purple trumpet-shaped flowers. There was a patch of wild violets hiding in a hollow next to the Rose of Sharon, beautiful tiny visitors my grandmother forced me to evict from the premises (I'd asked for special dispensation for them, but the judge said no). Further back, the snowball bush was in full bloom too; each snowball was comprised of hundreds of tiny white flowers, and every snowball was bigger than my fist. The bush had been there so long, it wasn't a bush any more. It was gigantic, so big you could barely see past it to the lilac bush in the corner.

The lilac bush was old too, and huge -- it had become a lilac tree. The dowager lilac tree draped her purple robes over the rickety wood-and-wire fence that separated the yard from the alley and hid the telephone pole that secretly propped her up. The individual blossoms were every color from almost blue to lavender pink to deepest purple, and the scent of the lilacs in bloom was so strong it could make you woozy. I'd cut the grass around her, then come back with shears, and fill one aromatic vase that would scent our entire small house.

I was thinking of those lilacs when I looked up the old house on Google. Detroit's bankruptcy is big news at the moment -- a million people have left, and so has hope. They say one picture is worth a thousand words:

https://www.google.com/maps?q=&layer=c&z=17&iwloc=A&sll=42.424350,-82.981418&cbp=13,182.0,0,0,0&cbll=42.424581,-82.981407&sa=X&ei=B1L3UYXwE8XgiwKi6oG4Dg&ved=0CC4QxB0wAA

I wonder if the ghosts of flowers haunt the ghetto?  Do the gangbangers and block bosses ever lift up their heads and sniff the air, confused by the scent of lilacs?

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Love Street - Marcy Miller

by Liz Zuercher


The Millers live down the street from Little Chad, backing up to the hill.



Marcy Miller pulled into her driveway after taking the three big kids to school.  The baby had fallen asleep in the car seat and she was so preoccupied she grabbed the bag of stuff she’d picked up at the drug store and was in the kitchen unloading it before she realized she’d left him in the car.  That made her start to tear up and she shook her head hard to make it stop.

“Don’t do that,” she told herself out loud.  “Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry,” she said, willing herself to get a grip.  She went back out to the garage and opened the back door of the black Chevy Suburban and looked at her son.  So sweet.  So peaceful.  He was a really good baby.  She had nothing to feel sad about.  It’s what she’d wanted – a passel of children and a beautiful home and a great husband who would do anything for her – why didn’t she feel happy?  What was wrong with her?

Marcy unhooked the clasp on the baby’s seat harness and lifted his dead weight, feeling a twinge in her lower back.  At almost a year old he was getting to be a chunk of a baby.  Her other three had been slight like her, willowy and light, but Jack was going to be more like his dad.  Tall.  Solid.  Substantial.  Jack’s head fell to her shoulder and he whimpered like a kitten and then lifted his head, looked around and started to cry.

“Shh, shh, it’s okay, Jack,” she said quietly.  “We’re home now.”  She ran her hand over the top of his head, smoothing down the tufts of thick brown hair that stood on end, making him look like a little ragamuffin.  He was still in his footed jammies, the ones with Superman flying around, red and blue and yellow on a white background that had turned a little dingy no matter how much color safe bleach she put in the washing machine.  He quieted and laid his head back down on her shoulder, putting his thumb in his mouth.

The phone was ringing as she and Jack walked into the kitchen.  She put Jack into the high chair and picked up the receiver, but by that time the caller had given up.  She didn’t much care if they’d left a message.  She wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone anyway. 

Jack was starting to fuss, pounding on the high chair tray, so she grabbed the box of Cheerios from the pantry and poured a few onto the tray.  She filled up a sippy cup with apple juice, handed it to him and hoped he wouldn’t fling it across the room the way he’d just discovered was lots of fun.  Thank God today he just wanted to drink his juice and play with the Cheerios.  She couldn’t deal with a feisty kid today, not this morning.

She was making a slow cooker beef stew for dinner, so she started cutting up vegetables and getting the meat browned.  The onions made tears come to her eyes again and this time there was no stopping them.  Her period was late.  She looked at the drug store bag on the counter.  She was afraid to use the early pregnancy test.  She was afraid of what it would tell her.  God couldn’t be doing this to her again.  Please God, I just can’t do it again.  Isn’t four enough?  She put the butcher knife on the cutting board, pulled out one of the bar stools and sank into it, burying her head in her arms on the counter, tears flowing strong now. 

She prayed for forgiveness from God and her husband and their evangelical parents and her pastor for not wanting another child.  She prayed for it not to be true.  She prayed for guidance. 

“Jesus, help me,” she cried out loud.

Just then Jack let out a joyful squeal and threw the sippy cup across the room, where it hit the tile floor, popping the lid off and sending sticky apple juice all over the floor and the cabinets.  Jack laughed like a wild animal, so pleased with what he’d been able to do, and he looked at her with a big grin and sang out, “Mama!  Mama!  Cup!” 

Marcy couldn’t help herself.  She let out her own wild animal scream at the top of her lungs, and Jack’s face turned from delight to fear to clouds of concern.  His laughter stopped and he started to cry along with his mother.

* * * * *

Marcy didn’t listen to her phone messages until after she’d picked the kids from school, dropped Charlie off at soccer practice and took Tiffany to her dance class.  Carl would pick them up on his way home.  Ashleigh had a big project for school that involved looking through magazines and cutting out geometric shapes that occurred in nature, so Marcy had set her up at the kitchen table with a stack of magazines, blunt scissors, a glue stick and construction paper. 

She put Jack down for a nap and wished she could lie down herself, or fill the bathtub with hot soapy water for a long soak.  Or walk out the door and never come back, she thought.  The idea stopped her in her tracks halfway down the stairs.  She didn’t mean that, she told herself.  Yes you do, came into her head.  You certainly do want to run away, get as far away as you can.  But what good would it do?  Her family still needed her.  She had responsibilities, huge responsibilities that couldn’t be ignored.  She loved them all, but she was so tired.  It all felt so overwhelming.

She thought about the pregnancy test.  She hadn’t been able to bring herself to use it yet.  Instead, she had hidden it under her bathroom vanity, deep in the back of the cabinet behind a Costco-sized box of tampons that she hadn’t needed for at least six weeks by her calculations.  Maybe tomorrow she’d do the test.  Maybe she’d get her period tonight and wouldn’t have to take the test.

“Mom?” Ashleigh was calling her.  “Mom, I need help.”

“Just a minute,” Marcy replied.  “I’m coming.”

After she showed Ashleigh what a diamond shape was, she checked on her crock-pot stew and started putting together a salad, which she figured the kids wouldn’t eat.  She’d try anyway.  Maybe she’d get lucky.  Right.  Lucky would be not having another baby so soon, or ever again. 

She thought about calling her mother, and picked up the phone.  That’s when she remembered someone had called in the morning and she hadn’t picked up in time.  The line was beeping, so she listened to the message.  It was Kristen.  Something about a meeting of the moms tomorrow morning.  Something about Eddie Petrocelli’s fake animals.  Who cares, Marcy thought.  Who cares what he puts in his front yard?  What business was it of hers?  Of theirs?  But she erased the message and dialed Kristen’s number anyway.  Maybe it would be a distraction.

* * * * *

Marcy sat at the kitchen table by herself, lost in thought.  The kids had been fed and tucked into bed.  For the third night in a row Carl was working late.  She looked over at the empty place setting where he should have sat and eaten dinner with them, the stew that was his favorite and had been cooking all day.  She had set a pretty table with the slate blue woven place mats, the cloth napkins he preferred with a swirly pattern of blue and white and beige and the silverware they had gotten as a wedding gift from Carl’s grandmother.  Slate blue candles sat in pewter holders waiting to be lit, and the potted ivy in the center of the table reached out arms of green toward the edges of the table.  Carl liked the dinner table to be a calm, soothing place for the family to gather at the end of the day, which was hard for Marcy to manage with four children under the age of ten.  Still, she tried to make things nice for the family, for Carl. 

The stoneware soup bowl waited on the placemat for the stew to be ladled into it, but by this time, ten o’clock, Marcy was pretty sure Carl wouldn’t want stew when he got home.  He had called at four in the afternoon to let her know he’d be late again.  He wouldn’t be able to pick up the kids from their activities, so Marcy had had to wake up Jack from his nap and load him and Ashleigh into the Suburban to make the rounds for the other kids.  The three bigger kids were all starving when they got home, so Marcy scooped up some stew for them and sat them down at the kitchen counter to eat while she fed Jack and nibbled at a piece of sourdough bread she’d buttered and put under the broiler to go with the stew.  She didn’t bother with the salad for the kids – they wouldn’t eat it anyway and she didn’t feel like listening to the whining that would definitely follow the setting out of anything green and leafy.  Even though they didn’t finish all their stew, she let them have ice cream bars for dessert so she wouldn’t have to deal with the please, please Moms.  She didn’t have the will to be a diligent mother tonight, except when it was bedtime.   Tonight she was desperate to get all the kids to bed.

By eight o’clock the kids had all been either sent or put to bed, and Marcy curled up on the sofa to wait for her husband.  She watched a mindless show on television until nine o’clock, when she decided she’d better eat something and grabbed the salad from the fridge, poured some ranch dressing over it and picked at the bits of chopped tomato and lettuce.  Nothing tasted good.  She dumped the rest of the salad down the disposal, turned on the water and flipped the switch, welcoming the loud grinding sound that drowned out the noise of the thoughts in her head.  She tried to imagine another baby.  The thought of physically having another baby in the first place made her shudder.  And then taking care of it.  That was a whole other thing.  She stared down at the disposal.  She wished it were as easy as shoving the salad down the drain – not having a baby.  She was horrified that such a thought would pop into her head and she flipped off the disposal to stop the grinding.

“Forgive me, Lord,” she whispered. 

Standing at the sink, she looked out the window at her back yard.  She couldn’t make out much in the dark, but she thought she saw something moving beyond the rear fence.  She blinked her eyes to try and focus, but it didn’t help.  She couldn’t make out anything and figured she was imagining things.

By ten o’clock as she sat alone at the kitchen table, she knew what she would have to do.  Carl would never understand, but he would have to respect her decision, wouldn’t he?  She sat waiting to tell him that she thought she was pregnant again, and that she just couldn’t have another baby.

At eleven, she put the stew away and washed out the crock-pot.  She put away her husband’s soup bowl and set the silverware back in the drawer.  Picking up Carl’s placemat and pretty cloth napkin, she carried them to the dining room buffet and smoothed them into the top drawer.  The unlit candles and ivy plant stayed on the kitchen table like they always did.  Leaving the light on above the cooktop for Carl, Marcy climbed the stairs to the master bedroom and went to bed.  Her morning would start early, so she couldn’t afford not to sleep.  Sleep was elusive, though.

At midnight she heard the garage door open.  She heard Carl stumble over something downstairs and make his way up the stairs and into the bedroom.  She didn’t move from her side, her back to him, when he got into bed smelling like garlic and jasmine, rolled away from her and went to sleep. Marcy stared into the darkness.