Never having read any Stephen King (with the exception of On Writing, years ago), I have no idea whether my style remotely resembles his.  (My previous blog post came up Margaret Atwood – yay! – but the first page of my novel, which I re-wrote yesterday, came up Dan Brown – bleurgh.) Maybe those of you who read King can read this short story of mine and compare.  But do not expect any telekinetic prom queens, freaky clowns, or possessed automobiles.

Dust to Dust

I hear the doorbell ring and suddenly the panic takes me
The sound so ominously tearing through the silence
I cannot move, I’m standing
Numb and frozen
Among the things I love so dearly
The books, the paintings, and the furniture
Help me …
- Abba, “The Visitors”

Two black bags stood packed in the middle of the living room. It was the first time they’d ever been used, purchased not quite three months ago at the J.C. Penney thirty miles away. Their newness was obvious, even jarring, in the midst of all the antique furniture that fitted out the room. A lot of it was Victorian, or Victorian reproduction, and all of it feminine. None of it suited the dark paneled walls and rustic beams in the ceiling, and it certainly wasn’t the kind of furniture to suit the leathery skinned, denim clad cowboy leaning against the kitchen doorjamb staring at the bags (who, if he’d heard himself called a cowboy, would’ve made a gruff sound in his throat; he was far too old to be called any kind of boy). It was the detritus of the grandmother Judith had never known, which always seemed coated in layers of dust no matter how often she took the furniture polish to it, as if the dust were Nana’s presence in the house.

The old cowboy — Papa, he was to Judith — never talked much about Nana, yet to Judith, it somehow felt like he never spoke of anything else. He held her forever in his deep-set, startlingly blue eyes; her name was marked indelibly on his forearm, below the rolled-up shirtsleeve. Once Judith had asked about the tattoo, and Papa grunted and told her that all the guys got them during the war — anchors and eagles and such war imagery, or hearts draped in banners with their sweethearts’ names. It was very romantic, Judith thought, and very tragic. She told her boyfriend Johnny, and for Christmas he got her name tattooed on his bicep for her, which made Judith write in her diary that it would be Johnny her own granddaughter would see forever held in her eyes. Which were green, and not as naturally conducive to tragic romance as startling blue; but she had to work with what she got.

What Papa didn’t tell Judith was that Betty Jean hadn’t been impressed by the romantic gesture. Said she thought love meant remembering a girl’s name without having it written on your arm like a cheat sheet. She’d been that breed of practical Baptist farm girl indigenous to East Texas — the breed of girl Judith had never quite managed to be, even though she wore western cut jeans and shirts and boots.

But then, Judith had been born in San Francisco.

Today she was going off to college, which neither Nana nor Papa had done, and which Papa couldn’t see the purpose of, as her own mama, he’d told her more times than she could keep track of during the college application process, had only gotten an illegitimate child (her) and a drug addiction (and eventual OD) for the cost of tuition. Judith had argued more times than she could keep track of that her mama had gone to Berkeley in the 70s for art, while she was staying local to earn her teacher’s certificate. She couldn’t change that much.

When you lived in the part of East Texas Judith and her grandfather did, “local” didn’t mean there was a college near enough that Judith could live at home with Papa as she had since she was five. Judith didn’t have her own car (this past summer Papa had driven her to and from her job at the J.C. Penney in his battered old farm truck). Johnny, headed to a technical college in the same town as Judith, had gotten a new Ford F-150 for high school graduation, and would drive Judith to the start of the semester and bring her home for Thanksgiving.

So, all her clothes that would get her though the sweltering Texas August and September and the warm October and November (jeans, boots, a variety of short and long-sleeved plaid, striped, solid, and the odd floral shirts, and her letter jacket, in case of the random cold snaps Texas usually got for a day or two before Thanksgiving, before Indian summer set in) were packed in the black suitcase; the matching duffel bag held one of Nana’s handmade quilts and a set of sheets she’d embroidered — and a couple of bath towels, which were new, and had caused a mainly silent quarrel with Papa when she’d come off a shift at J.C. Penney with a shopping bag in hand (as in, he’d looked from beneath his heavy brow, and frowned, while she argued her case). Judith hated old towels, and had gotten these in a buy one, get one for one cent sale, on top of her employee discount. Practically free. In fact Papa ought to save a few bucks returning the suitcase and duffel, which were her graduation presents, and let her re-buy them with her discount. He’d looked insulted by the suggestion, so Judith let it drop. Was he feeling insulted all over again, she wondered, as he stared at her suitcases?

In actuality, Judith mistook insult for chagrin, but Papa’s tan, lined face was a difficult one to read. Had he been too thrifty over the years? Was that why Barbara turned out like she did?

“Thought you was s’posed to meet Johnny out front,” he said.

Judith had been walking slowly all around the living room, running her hands over each piece of furniture and every knickknack, picking up the framed photographs as if to hug her nana, her mama. Most of the pictures in the room were faded to shades of yellow, or black and white, as Papa hadn’t used the camera since Nana passed away. There were a few of Judith — her yearbook pictures, including her most recent in a bright red cap and gown — but none of them were framed, as Papa claimed he “didn’t know nothin’ ’bout that kinda thing”. Scribbled in one of her spiral notebooks she’d bought for her courses and packed in the duffel bag along with her linens was a list of all the pictures of herself and their dimensions; for Christmas she thought she’d frame her pictures for Papa, and maybe buy one of those wooden picture display shelves she’d seen when she was working at Penney’s.

She looked over her shoulder at Papa and lifted an eyebrow. “Thought you hated it when Johnny honks for me instead of coming to the door.”

“Don’t stop you from goin’ out with him.”

Shaking her head, Judith turned away again. “I called him back last night and said he had to come in and get my bags like a Southern gentleman and stand here and say Yessir while you give him hell about not speeding and not being alone in his apartment with me and not going to any parties and getting busted for drinking.”

Papa’s only response was an unintelligible gruff monosyllable. Judith chose to interpret it as a laugh, though if she were honest, she wasn’t sure she’d ever actually heard Papa laugh.

For some minutes they stood silent in the living room, as they’d passed so much of their lives. Gradually Judith became aware of that third-wheel sensation she’d come to recognize in her teen years as Papa having a conversation with Nana. She sat at the far end of the sofa, closest to the TV, and flicked it on with the remote so they could have their privacy. Anyway she always had to sit down when the air became heavy like it was now, as all the unsaid words filled up the space that was already stifling from the mid-August sunlight glaring through the window sheers and the musty, mildewy smell they never had been able to find the source of, which was so much worse this time of year.

The roar of an approaching truck engine told Judith that Johnny was coming up the dirt driveway. She pictured the cloud of dust his tires kicked up since it had been another summer of drought. He’d gripe the whole way to Waco about getting his shiny new black pickup dirty. Shutting off the TV, she stood and thought about what she’d say to shut him up. Probably that she’d take his truck to the damn car wash when they got there. She had lots of quarters in her purse for the dorm laundry rooms.

The putter of the idling engine indicated Johnny was parked in front of the house now. Then the engine kicked off. A heavy door creaked open, then banged shut. There was a jangle of keys, pocket change, and Johnny’s big belt buckle as cowboy boots clopped to the door.

The bell rang.

“You gonna get that?” Papa asked.

Judith nodded, but found she couldn’t make her legs move toward the door. She couldn’t even really think about it. Out the corner of her eye, she saw Papa push off from the wall, his long jean encased legs that ended in pointy-toed boots the color of dust bringing him two steps closer to her.

“You change your mind? You know I won’t object to you staying home and working at the J.C. Panty’s.”

If Judith had been looking at him, she would’ve seen that Papa’s eyes, sunk back under his heavy brow, were twinkling, and that it was her own image wrapped in the startling blue. But Judith was lost in her own mind, and her earliest memory of living in Texas replaying with all the clarity of its having occurred a moment ago.

Papa had taken her to church for the first time in her life, and she’d been awed by the pristine white steeple and the stained glass windows. It was the prettiest building in town (which wasn’t saying a lot). She’d also run, crying, from the five year-olds’ Sunday school classroom when a china doll of a girl with wavy black hair pulled back in a pink hair bow, wearing a pink sundress with a poufy skirt and white patent leather sandals asked her why she was wearing jeans and a Rainbow Brite t-shirt to church.

Mrs. Newsome, the preacher’s wife, had noticed Judith in Papa’s wiry arms, her face buried in his collar, wetting it with tears, and offered to take her shopping after the service. “Panty’s is havin’ a clearance sale,” she said, which only distressed Judith more; it wasn’t her panties Amy had made fun of, although they were probably wrong, too. So she’d let Mrs. Newsome take her to the mall.

Being from San Francisco, Judith knew even at the tender age of five that two department stores that didn’t even have escalators because they were only one storey, and a couple of shoe stores, jewelry shops, and a Wal Mart, wasn’t a good mall. But they got corny dogs for lunch, and when Mrs. Newsome delivered her home to Papa, Judith jumped out of the station wagon and skipped up to Papa with a shopping bag in hand. “Corn Dog 7′s my favorite restaurant and guess what, Papa! Panty’s doesn’t just sell underwear!”

Papa and Mrs. Newsome spent an hour trying to teach her that the store was called J.C. Penney, just like the money, but got no further than Judith saying, “That’s what I said! J.C. Panty!” They thought she was just being a kid, until a week later, when Judith came home from Sunday school laughing about the little boy who’d crossed his legs and squirmed around in his chair and shouted out in the middle of the Bible story, “Tay-cher! I nayed ta go tay-tay!” that they realized Judith’s panty/Penney confusion stemmed from the unfamiliar drawn-out vowel sounds of a Texas twang to her Californian ears. Mrs. Newsome had laughed and laughed in front of Judith, a cackle most unbecoming for a preacher’s wife, which peeled through the tiny farmhouse and hurt Judith’s ears as well as her feelings, and said, “Judy, (Judith hated to be called Judy, though she’d never told anyone) you’re half-Texan. You’ll talk like a native yet.” Papa had laughed, too, though Judith never knew; he’d saved it for the privacy of his bedroom, as he had done when her mama tickled him.

Since then Judith’s speech had, as Mrs. Newsome predicted, relaxed into a drawl. And, ironically, she’d been assigned to the lingerie department of J.C. Penney. Papa had laughed in his room about that, too.

The doorbell rang again. It seemed to have been more forcefully punched this time, and, imagining Johnny sighing and crossing his arms and leaning against the siding, and shaking his head at her when she let him in, asking, “The heck took you so long, Judy?” and “You deaf, woman?” Judith snapped into action.

But her legs did not take her to the door, her hands did not turn the knob to yank it open. She bolted across the living room and threw her arms around Papa’s lean frame. The worn denim of his shirt pressed to her cheek, the wiry softness of his beard tickled her forehead. His strong arms, especially the one tattooed with Nana’s name, held her tightly to him. She almost had an inkling that he loved her and wished to God she wouldn’t go, because she would come back changed; but then it occurred to her it wasn’t her he was sending off to college, but that he was back in the summer of ’76, sending her mama off to Berkeley.

She pulled away. “You bought me suitcases so I could go somewhere.”

And, whether he knew it or not (which he did), so she could be someone. Problem was, neither of them knew who that was, and both were afraid of who it might be.

Judith opened the door, but when Johnny came in saying exactly what Judith had predicted he would, Papa already had her bags in his hands, and he carried them out to the dusty black pickup truck for her.

It was Papa who opened the passenger side door for her as Johnny turned the ignition, Papa who shut it. He said goodbye with a single nod. But as Johnny began to silently back his truck down the long drive, Judith saw through the swirl of dust Nana standing beside Papa. He had his arm around her, and she was waving. Only it wasn’t goodbye; Nana’s hand was somehow connected to Judith’s heart, and there was a twinge, a pull…

Judith turned her head and looked at Johnny. “Just turn the truck around in the yard. Let’s get heck out of Dodge.”

“Yes ma’am.” Johnny threw the shift into drive, jammed his foot on the gas. Papa and the house vanished behind them in a cloud of dust that coated Judith’s new suitcases in the back of the truck.

Her Dying Wish (Part 2)

Normally, Saturday mornings were for her (as they are for everybody–as they are for you) bliss.  Waking up is a delight because you have slept well, your subconscious untroubled in slumber by the unpleasant prospect of being woken by an alarm and having to go to work and finding repose in the freedom of an entire day ahead of you to do as you please–or, if you are dying, an entire day to do the things you always wanted to do before you die.

This Saturday, however, she awoke feeling as if she had never slept at all.  She did not remember in any detail the nightmares of Soviet hostels that had prevented her achieving rest, but she vividly recalled her previous night’s struggle with disloyalty to Heavenly Cloud, and hated herself a little now for her reaction of dread for her physical comfort when she became aware of her need for the bathroom, which was precisely the terror that had troubled her sleep.  And when she discovered that the first roll of toilet paper had not been an anomaly in the package, all thoughts were forgotten of how she was going to seize her remaining days.

She retreated to bed, curled up in a fetal position, and resisted the temptation to open her laptop and try to restore the document she had deleted last night.

The extraordinary thing, however, was that if you saw her that day, hiding in her bed from herself and her deepest-seated impulses, you would not have thought her pathetic.  And if you’d known her before she thought she was dying of melanoma, you would say that she had never been this passionate, for good or ill, about anything but Heavenly Cloud toilet paper in her whole life to date.  You would choose to be around this version of her rather than the old, because now even though Heavenly Cloud was, once more, the instigator of her passion, something else lurked beneath the surface.  Something interesting and even inspiring.  The very thing, in fact, which John Roberts observed in her when he watched her run riot through the supermarket.  A few minutes with her would, inevitably, have you thinking of an un-hatched egg which, the night before, had an unblemished shell but which, by this morning, had gained a crack from the chick’s first peck of its tiny beak.

By Sunday, the use of Heavenly Cloud toilet paper had caused even more cracks in the veneer.  Unfortunately, the first person who saw her was Mrs. Reverend Green, who mistook them for simply cracking up.

It can hardly come as a surprise to you that someone who purchased her favorite brand of toilet paper for complete strangers in the supermarket also had been known to tell fellow members of her church that if the custodian someday ceased to purchase Heavenly Cloud for the church bathrooms (he thought less about comfort than about the fact that the brand name had a certain churchy-ness about it) she would have to consider changing congregations.  So, after she’d been tortured for two days by the new formula she thought church would give her sanctuary.  The last thing she needed on top of melanoma was a kidney backup.

Good news was, she didn’t get a kidney backup.

Bad news was, she developed a case of adult-onset potty mouth.

Glossing over the exact words she used, we shall simply say that she found no relief in the first stall of the ladies’ room…

…or the second…

…or the third…

…and saw a loathed diamond weave pattern staring back at her with mockery in its pinprick eyes.

For good measure, she told the moron who built the church and hung all the doors so that they swung inward instead of out where he could go.

“Merciful heavens.”

The merciful heavens were quite the opposite of where she had told Gary Burns to go; they were, however, what Mrs. Reverend Green entreated when she entered the ladies’ room with Nola Davies (who was, at age 97, the oldest member of the congregation and, frighteningly, still drove herself to every church service) and heard the un-churchly words echo from the last stall.

Any other church member, having been caught using bad language in front of Mrs. Green and Nola Davies, would have shuffled meekly out of that bathroom stall, red-faced and unable to make eye contact.  Any other church member would have apologized profusely, made excuses, and prayed God was too busy resting on the Sabbath to notice what words came out of one woman’s mouth.

Not her.

She laughed.

For as she emerged from the last stall and saw Mrs. Green standing in the doorway, a fog she hadn’t been aware of previously cleared from her mind.  Once she’d dreamed about saying a bad word at church.  Mrs. Green’s  dream face had looked just like it did now, a caricature of scandalized.  She was tempted to say another one just so she could snap a picture with her camera phone to record the expression.

If you asked her why she wanted a picture, she would tell you so she could look back and find this perfect happiness again when life inevitably made it elude her–which the melanoma she might (or might not) have would do soon enough.

But she didn’t curse again, or get out her camera phone.  If you asked her why, she would have told you that it was because this wasn’t perfect happiness–though she felt closer to it than when she was wreaking havoc in the Though Shalt Not Touch Aisle or writing her complaint letter/horror story.

Now, for the first time, she feared her imminent death.  She wasn’t ready to go yet, not without having achieved perfect happiness.  All her life she’d thought it would come from a European vacation or writing a novel, or, by a very slight chance, from skydiving.  But now she knew the key to that happiness lay within her. There was only one thing she could do to find it.

And she had to do it now.

“I’m going home sick,” she said.  “Melanoma, you know.”

She was out the door and on her way, and so missed Mrs. Green shaking her head and saying that, melanoma or not, there was never an excuse to use bad language, and Nola seasoning her speech with salt in a way the Bible didn’t exactly mean.

“I’d sign up for melanoma if it meant I could do the things I always dreamed of and look that happy,” she cried.  “Now help me wash my hands!”

#

If you asked her how she expected to feel and what she expected to happen when she sent the Heavenly Cloud manufacturer a complaint email about the new toilet paper formula, she would have told you stonily:  “Nothing.  I have no expectations.”

The truth was, before she sent the email, she expected to hit ‘send’ and immediately burst out laughing, her head thrown back as it had been that day in the supermarket when she broke the jars of pickles and realized she’d just given in to a heart’s desire.  There had been glee in punching ire into her keyboard, a heart-pumping exhilaration at clicking ‘send’–but it all fled, and no happiness, not even imperfect happiness, took its place.

This was, of course, because it was the results of these actions, the reactions–the supermarket employee running frantically with mop and caution sign to clean up the spilled pickle juice before someone slipped and filed a lawsuit; Mrs. Green looking so scandalized to hear swear words at church–that she had always longed for, not actually the little rebellions against society in and of themselves.

The truth of this hit her as the message went whizzing through cyberspace, and she let out a cry as though struck in the chest.

A complaint email could only be satisfactory if she got an email back in reply, and whether any such thing would appear in her inbox was highly debatable.  Doubtful, even.  Unlikely, as customer service representatives in general weren’t exactly known for providing satisfactory responses to anything.  She definitely wouldn’t hear anything immediately, as today was Sunday.

Also, there simply wasn’t much you could say back to, “Heavenly Cloud would be more aptly renamed Hell Fire,” especially when it was signed, “a very dissatisfied customer who is dying of melanoma and would prefer her last days to be as blissful as the heavenly cloud she will soon inhabit.”

She held out half a hope that maybe the person in the complaint department would also have recently learned he was dying and answer as an act of impulse.  There was nothing to expect except that this would be out of her system, and she would not die and haunt the world as a ghost because she’d left business unfinished.  Because she knew now that she hadn’t really wanted to travel to Europe, write a novel, or skydive before she died.

There was one thing she was expecting, which she had all but forgotten, and that was that her dermatologist was due to call her on Monday with the results of her mole biopsy.  This was not the sort of thing most people forgot.  Since she had diagnosed herself with terminal cancer from the onset, she had not given a second thought to the fact that nothing about her health was actually confirmed.  Thus, fearful expectation of test results had no part in the despondency that fell over her upon emailing the manufacturer.  Instead, it was pure confusion about her desires and what it meant to be happy.  If it had all only been about getting something out of her system, then why had it made her so deliriously glad, teasing her with the promise of perfect bliss?

She slept badly–again–and woke Monday morning in a worse state than she had even after that first morning of using the horrible toilet paper.  She called in sick from work; if she didn’t really know any more what she wanted to do before she died, she at least knew she didn’t want to be at work.  Though she was not consciously expecting anything from this day, her manager thought she sounded anxious–like she’d received a death threat.  Indeed, if you saw her then, you would inevitably think once more of that hatching egg, the shell no longer smooth, unbroken white, but cracked all over and shifting like a miniature buckling of tectonic plates as the little bird within pecked and flapped with frail, new wings.

And then, just as she was drifting off into depressed slumber, her phone rang.

Her heart began to pound.

“Your biopsy’s negative.  You just have a weird mole.  Or had.  It’s the lab’s now.”

Fifteen words.

Fifteen words from a receptionist were all her heart required to break.

She wasn’t dying.

It made sense, considering she’d never felt ill or displayed any other symptom of melanoma.  Her socially deviant behavior, of course, though uncharacteristic for her, would not have been physically connected to cancer even if her mole biopsy had come back malignant.

But it had not.

She supposed she ought to be relieved and thankful, but she was far from it.  She wasn’t dying, but now that she’d done all she wanted to do before she died, she wasn’t sure she had anything left to live for.

All she had to live with was a lot of guilt that came down on her so crushingly that all she could do was lie prone on her bed.

Up till now, she’d not felt badly for a single thing she’d done, her supposed impending death giving her a sort of immunity.  In this moment of learning that she would live on and on, however, bravado fled, and she was pummeled with accusations from her conscience:  destruction of property, coarse language, harassment…And it made her furious.  She had been duped.  Deceived by that serpent who promised knowledge and happiness.  Suckered into sinning, coerced into criminal acts…

Now, this feeling she was mistaking for guilt was actually sorrow that she’d been caught.  If you were dying, no one could excommunicate you or send you to prison.  And that was really all she was thinking now: what did Mrs. Green think of her now for swearing at church?  And Nola Davies?

(Nola was, in fact, praying not to die before next Sunday so she could again see that young woman who swore like a sailor in front of Mrs. Green and was so happy.)

She even felt sick–irrationally–over what that man who’d asked her out in the Thou Shalt Not Touch Aisle thought of her.  She must have been mistaken about his asking her out; he could only have been trying to mortify her, in some roundabout way, for her rude, crude, and socially unacceptable behavior.

As it turned out, John Roberts was not an irrational thought, as her brain told her, but the key to everything.  The proof that what she was feeling was not guilt, as she erroneously believed, came when there was a knock at her apartment door.

The first thought it prompted was that if there was anything she wanted to do before she died, it was never answer a door again.  But she got up anyway–not really weighed down by immobilizing guilt.

Standing on her tip-toes to look out the peephole, she saw a man in a suit, with his collar open and his tie undone.  On one shoulder he balanced a large, lumpy, blue and white parcel.

Curiosity distracted her from the fact that her heart was no longer in her chest where it was supposed to be, but residing considerably further north, cutting off her flow of air.  When she opened the door the first thing out of her mouth was not, “You’re the handsome executive who asked me out,” but instead was, “Is that…toilet paper?”

It was, and before John could answer, she noted the blue label and told him, “I only use Heavenly Cloud, though I guess I’ll have to switch brands since they changed the formula–”

“Did you buy the Heavenly Cloud in the red package?”

She thought for a moment, more about the fact that she’d previously missed what a pleasantly low, soft quality there was to his voice, than about his question.  It was exactly the male voice she’d always wanted to hear addressing her, pronouncing her name, but had all but given up on hearing, as dates became fewer and farther between.

“Yes,” she answered.

“You should’ve bought the Heavenly Cloud in the blue package.”  John lowered it from his shoulder and held it out to her so that she could see that the plastic wrap read, ‘New!  Heavenly Cloud Ultra Soft.’

“I don’t understand.”  She opened the door a little wider and stepped backward, further into her apartment.  “I’ve always bought the Heavenly Cloud in the red package.  It was always soft enough.”

Beneath his dark hair, his forehead creased.  “I knew the packaging would be confusing.  Our traditional red look went to the Ultra Strong formula.  That’s why it felt like Quilt Thick.”

He tried to press the toilet paper into her hands, and now the twelve-pack fell onto both their toes as she let out a gasp of realization.

“You’re the guy who reads the company’s complaint emails?”  Her face flushed violently hot.

“Not normally.  I’m the External Relations Manager, but I’ve been looking at the complaint emails since we revamped our product.  Yours was the first thing I saw when I went in this morning.”

“Great external relations.”

John grinned.  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mary.

Or is it Mary Beth?  And that was a great email.  Instrument of torture in a Soviet hostel, huh?”

She went by just plain Mary, but was too flummoxed to tell him.  “You knew it would be me here.  How?”

“You said you were dying of melanoma.  I saw you buy Heavenly Cloud Ultra Strong.  I knew you were a woman who does whatever you please, even if it’s not a social norm, and that it makes you very happy.”  His Adam’s apple bobbed, and his gaze flicked down to her lips.  His tongue darted out to moisten his own.  “I just knew.”

Mary held the doorknob for support, and she felt herself swaying toward him.  But she held back, a lump suddenly lodging in her throat.  “I’m not.”

“Not what?”

“Not dying and not happy and not doing what I please.  The serpent–”

“The serpent?  Are you sure your name isn’t Eve?”  He grinned; it was a smile she couldn’t help returning.  “No, it was all you, Mary Beth, and you’re definitely a happy woman, and I have to say I’m very, very happy to hear you’re not dying.”  John leaned toward her, reached out as if to touch her, but then withdrew.  “What do you say we go to a fancy restaurant tonight?  You can go in jeans and a t-shirt, and I–well, I’ve always wanted to put ‘no shirt, no shoes, no service’ to a test.  Haven’t you?”

#

From that moment onward, if you asked Mary Beth Jameson what she wanted to do before she died, she would tell you things surprising and remarkable: not to travel to Europe (though she and John had booked a ski trip to Switzerland for this coming Christmas), not to write a novel, nor to go skydiving, not even if she was feeling adventurous when you asked her.

(Although, that did not mean she was opposed to the idea; in fact, she and Nola Davies had signed up to take skydiving lessons.  But that was Nola Davies’ dream, not hers.)

If she told you what she did want to do before she died, you would not believe her, because these were not the things everyone wanted to do before they died–certainly not the things you yourself want to do before you die.

Or at least not the things you yourself admit to wanting to do before you die.

Regardless of whether or not you believed she really wanted to do these things, if she told you she wanted to, she would be telling you the truth.  Because unlike everyone else who said they wanted to travel to Europe or write a novel before they died, Mary Beth Jameson had actually done the things she had always wanted to do before she died, was doing them on a regular basis, because the only thing she had really wanted to do before she died was to live.

And she began by putting the rest of her package of Heavenly Cloud to good use…

…TPing Reverend and Mrs. Green’s house.

Since my readers are probably more interested in what I write than in how I write it, I’ll kick off Fiction Fridays with a short story I wrote a few years ago.  Actually, it’s not terribly short, so I’ll break it into two parts to post this week and next.  It’s a humor piece, and a love story, and it stars a roll of toilet paper.  Something for everyone.

Her Dying Wish

by LR Burt

If you asked her what she wanted to do before she died, she would tell you things unsurprising and unremarkable: to travel to Europe, to write a novel, to go skydiving, maybe, if she was feeling adventurous.

If she told you this, you would believe her; after all, everybody, yourself included, wants to travel to Europe, write a novel, and skydive before they die.

Like everyone who claims these dying wishes, she never put spare change in a jar to save for that European vacation; she never sat down to write the first line of the novel that came to her as a lightning bolt of inspiration; she definitely never felt adventurous enough to sign up for a skydiving course.

No, what she dreamed of, in her secret heart, was to knock glass jars off supermarket shelves; to say swear words in places and in front of people she shouldn’t; to write a scathing letter to a person of great importance.

In short, what she wanted to do before she died was to become a menace to society.

Of course, if you asked her, she would never tell you that, because as far as she knew, she really and truly believed she was exactly like everybody else–and nobody else wanted to become a menace to society before they died. At least, no one told her otherwise. If anyone had, she might have recognized her real dreams sooner, without resistance or thinking she was going mad, and by pleasanter means than the threat of her imminent death.

Although, if she had recognized her real dreams under less urgent circumstances, she would not have realized that she’d never really lived at all, or felt so acutely what it meant to come to life.

“This mole concerns me.  I’d like to remove it and send it for a biopsy.”

Fifteen words from a dermatologist were all her imagination required to self-diagnose melanoma.  This was not a typical reaction.  Most people would pay their $25 co-pay, then spend the rest of the day phoning family and friends to help them deny the possibility of anything being seriously wrong with them.  She, having no one, called her boss to say she wouldn’t be coming in for a half day as planned.  Because, as she didn’t say, she knew she would be too busy googling ‘melanoma’ to get any work done.

On her way home, she hit the drive-thru for a burger, which she never touched; when she flopped down on her couch with her laptop to eat it, she couldn’t stop herself clicking to view the image results of her search, which made her imagine every mole on her body swelling up to hamburger patty proportions.  Needless to say, this was not what she could expect for the progression of the disease if she had it.  (And you must remember, there was no hard evidence that she did.)  But the imagination is not known for medical realism–and to be fair, pictures of cancerous moles would make almost anyone lose their appetite.

Rather than navigating away from the images, or, better yet, closing her browser session completely and escaping into the world of daytime television, she continued to look.  In what to her mind was a rational way, she accepted that appetite loss would be a condition to which she would soon grow accustomed when she began aggressive chemotherapy.  Not that she had very long to get used to not eating, with a 9-15% survival rate.

At which point she began to wonder:  did she really want pass the few days remaining to her in a hospital bed?  She could live with the fact that her predestined date with her Maker was coming soon and very soon.

The operative word being live.

As her own voice replayed in her head stating all the things she’d always said she wanted to do before she died, her cursor once more found its way into the browser search box.  Her fingers, as though commanded by an irresistible inner urging, clicked over the keyboard, rattling out the query:  ‘European dream vacation.’

Despite having no real, heartfelt desire to tour Europe before her death, her appetite returned with the pictures of gourmet French restaurants and Venetian cafes; she now believed more strongly than ever that these were her dying wishes.  When her stomach’s gurgles increased to un-ignorable growls, she got up from her sofa, strode purposefully across her apartment, slid on the flip flops she’d abandoned at the door, and stepped out into the clear evening.  She would just pop into the supermarket for French onion soup fixings, a loaf of sourdough, maybe biscotti for dessert, definitely a bottle of cabernet.  She’d watch the Travel Channel from the kitchen while the soup simmered.  After the meal she’d book her vacation, then settle down to write the first chapter or two of her novel.

(Also, she was out of toilet paper and couldn’t wait much longer.)

As of a minute ago she’d never had one single idea for a novel.  Now, entire, beautifully worded paragraphs were sure to spring from her mind, fully formed like the goddess Athena from Zeus’ head.  Her novel would be about a woman with less than six months to live who decided to do all the things she’d always said she wanted to do before she died.  Like go skydiving.

Or it would have been, had she been predestined to make it to the produce section.  Alas, she never did…

…or the liquor aisle…

…or the one with the broth….

…or the bakery…

…and therefore she was predestined not to have her European inspired meal or plan the vacation she did not really, in her heart of hearts, want to take.

En route to the produce section, she was distracted by the aisle which she had, since childhood, always thought of as the Thou Shalt Not Touch Aisle.  This, of course, was the one where jars of pickles, mayonnaise, salad dressing, mustard, ketchup, barbecue sauce, marinades, and jams, jellies, and preserves stood on shelves, a veritable rainbow encased in glass and gleaming under halogen lights.

A serpent whispered in her ear:  Hast thy mother really said thou shalt not touch the merchandise on this aisle?

Her mother definitely had; her nightmares were haunted by a white-faced and tight-lipped wagging-fingered warning which even in adulthood kept her dead center of the aisle, hands glued to her cart, too intimidated to actually shop.

Only today, the cart veered slightly to the left of center.  She barely had time to assume that the wheels must be out of alignment (they weren’t) before a disturbing image loomed in her mind, of herself wearing an evil leer as she–purposely–rammed her cart into the pickles.  She envisioned several jars plummeting to the tiled floor below, hitting with a crash; as she imagined jagged shards scattering, she could almost smell the wave of yellow-green, acerbic juice that would flood the aisle if she were really to do such a thing.  In actuality, her fingers locked in a death grip as she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, savoring the brine and vinegar tang that swirled upward from the imaginary wreckage and into her slightly flared nostrils.

Like a shark teased by the scent of blood wafting in the water, her eyes snapped open, narrowed but gleaming with madness as she bent over her cart, elbows akimbo, and rammed it into a shelf.

CRASH!

A half-dozen or so pickle jars hit the floor and shattered her dream-state.

Horrified, she saw that she really had carried out the random act of destruction.

Down the aisle, a lean, black-haired man wearing a dark business suit stared at her.  She interpreted his slight smile as a smirk and thought he could only be laughing at the clumsy dork.  Or maybe the crazy maniac.  The intensity of his gaze made a hot flush prickle its way up from the neck of her t-shirt and bloom on her face as she silently told herself of course she was just a clumsy dork, absolutely it had been an accident, she had most definitely not hit the pickle shelf with her cart on purpose.

And then the man spoke:  “Hello.”

Three steps brought him to a more conversational distance from her.  One hand tugged at his tie, which hung loose in the open collar of his dress shirt, as he extended the other to her.  She didn’t shake it, because she was too busy thinking he looked nervous, which he was, and trying to work out why; women wearing grubby t-shirts they got free for donating blood didn’t make handsome men in expensive suits (she thought it might even be Armani) nervous.  Nor would she have believed him if he told her it was because he felt like he was meeting Princess Di or Mother Teresa or some great woman who was living out her life’s destiny regardless of what other people thought about her chosen path.

But nerves and her failure to shake his hand didn’t stop him from saying, “I’m John.  John Roberts.  Would you…want to have a drink?  With me?”

Her heart leapt.  Wouldn’t she! It had been years since she’d had a date, and she’d never had one with a man who wore Armani–

Just as abruptly, her heart fell did a petrifying freefall exactly like the one she imagined she would experience if she ever got adventurous enough to go skydiving.

Years.  She didn’t have years.

“Thanks,” she said, clutching the handle of her shopping cart tighter, trying (unsuccessfully) to ignore the inner twinge at the sight of his hand falling to his side and his cheeks going pink with mortification.  “I can’t.  I’ve got melanoma.  It’s terminal.”

Sure that he would rat her out in revenge for her rejection (he was actually thinking that it was always these angels who were taken too soon–too good for earth, they were), she didn’t wait for his reaction.  Instead, she wheeled her cart around and sped toward the end of the aisle, cringing at the dill spears squashing beneath the wheels and her flip flops, oozing a trail of juice behind her in the dust on the linoleum.

You’ve just committed a hit and run!  You’re a disloyal customer.  A bad citizen.  And you turned down a date with Probably Mr. Right.  You’re a complete and utter social deviant.

Not to mention a total idiot!

But her inner voice contained no authority, and did not command her to stop.  Instead, her pace quickened, carrying her more speedily away from the scene of the crime.  Her haste, however, was not motivated by shame or guilt for destroying private property, or even from regret that she’d turned down John Roberts.

“CLEAN-UP ON AISLE SEVEN!” she shrieked.  Or tried to shriek.  It came out more a squeak, strangled by a peal of laughter that pushed itself out of her lungs.

Her blood bubbled, her heart raced…It felt suspiciously like a thrill.  Which was exactly what it was, though she rejected the notion because normal people weren’t thrilled by deviance or stupid relationship moves.  She settled on exhilaration and blamed it on her impulsiveness, combined with the shock of learning of her own imminent death and being asked out by an incredibly handsome, apparently rich, man.

This was not the same life she had been not-living a few short hours ago.

She didn’t feel like herself at all.

If she had fled the supermarket then, she was not so far given over to her emerging desires that she could not have gone back to life as it had been prior to that point in time.  Sensing this, she panicked a little at the brink of change.  Still speeding toward the supermarket exit, she reasoned that mere months from her death was not the best time to suffer an identity crisis; she’d better go home and have a normal boring evening before she did something she regretted.

As it was, God (probably not the Judeo-Christian God, as He is not, historically, given to promoting delinquent behavior), the Universe, or Destiny, call it whatever you like, intervened.  A sudden burning within reminded her that while she could go home without French onion soup, French bread, biscotti, or cabernet, she could not go home without toilet paper.

So she pulled a u-turn.  She very narrowly avoided a collision with an apron-clad teenaged boy scurrying with a mop and yellow caution sign toward the Thou Shalt Not Touch Aisle.  The sight made her laugh again.  She raced toward the paper products aisle, astonished by the maniacal quality of her laugh, and yet unable able to stop laughing, not because she thought the situation was very funny so much as the act of laughing simply felt very, physically, good.

She’d never noticed before the precise way a laugh rippled up from her belly, making her chest feel big and full.  It was if the air she was breathing was made of pure joy, which tickled and tingled its way through her throat and out her lips.  And she’d never paid attention to the way the sound rang in her ears and made them feel pricked, alert, like a delighted dog’s or cat’s; or how, when her head was lolling back, her long ponytail whispered against the cotton of her t-shirt; or that her face, tilted up, up like a sunflower, felt so warm in rapture.

They were, of course, the sounds and sensations of a dream coming true.  But as we have established, she didn’t know she’d dreamed of this, so it never occurred to her that she was experiencing the endorphin rush that signified the culmination of a life-long desire.

(It also never occurred to her that John might have followed her or watched her from around the corner of a Heavenly Cloud toilet paper display stacked in the center of the aisle.)

One thought in her mind, of which she was not now fully conscious, but which, over the next few days, would become her singular, driving passion, was that if her melanoma struck her dead right now, as she ran her cart into that very display of Heavenly Cloud, toppling the tower of squashy building blocks, she would die a happy woman.  Or as close to happy as she could be, with dreams yet unrealized.

She was, by far, happier than she had ever been in her life to date.

#

It was the toilet paper that fundamentally altered her future.  A few squares of Heavenly Cloud set her life on an irrevocable course spiraling toward what she eventually would deem bliss.

Bliss was not, however, an adjective she would attach to the new roll of toilet paper.  She had not noticed, in her haste to get her Heavenly Cloud and get out of the supermarket, that the words “NEW AND IMPROVED FORMULA!” were emblazoned across the package.  Her personal experience found the former descriptor to be accurate, but as for improved… The formula violated everything she stood for as a toilet paper consumer–especially one who swore that God Himself stocked the bathrooms of His mansions with this brand.

She used Heavenly Cloud religiously, and if she saw you in the supermarket with any other brand in your cart, she would give you the $6.97 to buy a package of Heavenly Cloud.

Thus her current outrage.  She, who had been so faithful, had been betrayed–as no one in history had been since Judas sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.  All those people she’d converted!

Jerking the offending roll off the spring-mount wall holder, she tore off sheet after sheet, tossing them into the toilet.  She flushed it repeatedly until all that remained in her hand was an empty cardboard tube, and in her chest, a heart throbbing with satisfaction and adrenaline which prompted her to sprint to the living room and take up her laptop from where she’d abandoned it on the sofa when she decided to go to the supermarket.

Her fingers rattled across the keys in what she intended to be the beginning of a very scathing letter of complaint to the manufacturer of Heavenly Cloud toilet paper…

…only what came out was more like a horror story about a woman who’d found herself captive in a Soviet hostel where this formula of Heavenly Cloud was used as an instrument of torture.  Unable to stop herself from pounding violence and vitriol into her keyboard, she began to laugh, just as she had done while running amok in the supermarket.  She thought of that poor boy who’d had to clean up all those squashed pickles; what would Heavenly Cloud’s complaint department think if she told them cleaning up kitchen accidents was all their toilet paper was good for?

But her laughter and typing ceased when her conscience suddenly screamed, “WHAT IN HEAVEN’S NAME ARE YOU DOING?”

Fingers still curved in the home key position over the laptop, she sat for a second, chest heaving to catch her breath.  What was she doing?

Heavenly Cloud had never let her down before.  The flushed roll had been just one of twelve.  Perhaps only the one felt like a paper product rather than a textile.  Surely she could give Heavenly Cloud the benefit of the doubt?

With shaking hands, she selected the entire text of her document and punched delete–though not without a tightness in her throat and chest that made her next movements seem sluggish acts of will.

She shut down her computer, set it on the side table, switched off the lamp, and retreated to her bedroom.  Falling into bed, she pulled the covers up to her chin.  She was very tired; drained, in fact–as you tend to feel when a stopper is suddenly placed in your over-brimming happiness.

If only she knew that by writing that letter, the feeling would return and increase–and bring her something entirely unexpected, and even more secretly desired than deviant behavior.