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.

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.