Mary’s Room

I often wondered if all the things we have lost over a lifetime migrate to a room, and at the point of death we could enter and revisit them. My room would contain many things including my cousin Mary-Francis. Roy wrote about a professor who designed a pair of glasses which could show the wearer everything, presumably tangible, that he had lost. Could such a thing exist for the many missing intangibles like beauty, innocence, patience, resolve? Or in the corollary, could there be a pair of glasses that showed things we had found like wisdom or discretion or empathy?

Now where did I put my glasses?

Professor Thomas Villanova, in the great absent-minded tradition, was forever misplacing things. However, unlike his hapless colleagues, he decided to do something about it and created a deceptively simple pair of glasses (incorporating a highly sophisticated neural interface) that let him see what he’d misplaced and where he had left it.
     The trouble only started when he managed to misplace the glasses themselves and then find them right away, because as he learned soon enough, they had done their job, and he could no longer leave his empty room without being crushed by the realization of all he had lost.

Sophy’s Choice

     “Either tidy your toys, or they all go in a lawn sale.”
     “Sell them!” said the defiant six-year-old.
     At the end of the sale I let her choose one toy to keep and took the rest to Goodwill. I was surprised at her choice. She let a beloved doll go, seemingly without regret.
     The next morning I found her crying, “I miss Molly.”
     “Why didn’t you keep her?”
     “You said only one thing!”
     If she had begged for Molly, I would have relented, but how could she have known?
     I pawed through the toys at Goodwill, but Molly was gone.

Smarter than your Average Bear

Booboo is my cherished stuffed animal from 1964. He is now quite bald, and has had his set of pantaloons recovered more than once. Rich has his Woolley, a tiny English bear of the same vintage, cuddled to the point where it is now more owl pellet than plush toy. When Dan was three years old our neighbour Bhavnita gave him her black and white striped cat, a special toy that she loved as a child in 1988. Each Christmas the trio sit under the tree like Velveteen Rabbits reminding us that if you love something enough it becomes real.

Teddy

We’d been together since I was five months old, waking up in my crib Christmas day face-to-face with this large black-and-white bear staring down from my stocking.
     Those eyes, in fact, were the first thing to go, replaced with some crude needlepoint nubbins for safety’s sake. Other indignities would follow, but the bear endured, until eventually my mother set about to convince me that one couldn’t stitch old cloth with new thread and besides, the foam rubber was beginning to smell. Until finally, after a brief and private good-bye, I solemnly tossed fourteen years of companionship down the garbage chute.

Dangerous Wilderness

The woman was trapped in the bathroom, cut off from the rest of her house because of the bear that had innocently wandered into her kitchen, out of the surrounding woods from which the sprawling subdivision had been carved. All mod cons on the edge of the wilderness. No doubt the bear’s former stomping grounds. Fortunately for her, she had her cell phone and called her husband. He came with the police and they shot the bear.
     “Living here can be dangerous,” declared the husband, standing over the dead animal.
     Yeah, for the bears, I thought.

Mange-Pas Les Cailles

After twenty years of being a vegetarian I started eating animals. Since the oceans are dying and I don’t really want to be vegan, I decided that I would eat locally-sourced, humanely raised and dispatched animals, not all the time, but once in a while. That said, and I realize that this is ethical hair-splitting, I believe there are certain animals that really don’t need to be eaten. Veal and primates top the list, of course. But then there are quails, ostriches, alligators. I mean, why eat a quail? You might as well go out and bag yourself a sparrow.

Virgo

     “And what kind of question is that?”
     “I was just . . . ” said Nick. “I mean, I’ve always assumed, since you did have a boyfriend . . . ”
     “A girl can say no,” said Atalanta. “In fact, most of the boys I meet make that way too easy.”
     “But what about Hermes?” asked Nick.
     “I like him, but no.”
     “And Hercules?”
     “God, no!”
     The fire was fading against the cold sand, and the wood was running out.
     “Okay,” said Atalanta, “so what about Nicholas Lacaille?”
     “Only you,” said Nick, looking into the coals.
     “But we haven’t even . . . ”
     “I know,” said Nick. “So . . . maybe you?”

Buried Alive

“it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy.” The House of the Rising Sun, as the song goes. And a boy was the ruin of many a poor girl, thought Joan, seeing too many of her friends sacrifice their dreams to maintain disastrous relationships with men, driven by an insane dread of being categorized as a virgin. What was wrong with having higher aspirations than caving into bodily urges? Joan knew, having watched her friends go down, one by one, that a man could bury a girl’s dreams quicker than anything. And babies but the nails in the coffin.

Maybe she was thinking of Betty

Madame Catherine, the Consecrated Virgin and choir mistress at Ste-Anne’s had the tiniest feet. I used to watch in awe as her teeny little black ballet flats flew across the pedals. She played like Veronica Lodge from the Archies, employing the tips of her toes to do all the work. The fact that Madame actually chose to be a virgin intrigued me. What woman would willingly do this? I could see it if you had one eye in the middle of your head or a debilitating skin condition, but she was reasonably attractive. Maybe she just preferred the church organ.

B.C.

Barbara was just hanging around after school with her regular girlfriends when the conversation turned to birth control and what each of them used.
     Normally, she dreaded these moments—her turn again in the world’s longest game of Truth or Dare—but in this case at least, she was happily off the hook—okay, not so happy, since everyone already knew she didn’t even have a boyfriend, but happy enough for the pass.
     Christy said she used a diaphragm, and pulled the case from her purse to show off.
     Andrea said she was on the Pill.
     And Joanne said . . . “No.”

Laundroquip

The laundromat was busy that evening. Our household was temporarily without a washer and dryer so my mother was spending the evening pushing through the weekly laundry. I cannot remember what provoked the fight. I think I wanted the car, but of course she selfishly wanted to be able to take the clothes home after they were washed. This was during ‘that’ stage of my teens, when it was daily open war with my mother. “All right,” I said loudly, “I’ll just go out and get pregnant.” “It would have to be by artificial insemination,” she retorted, even louder.

Troglodate

It was set on Mackinac Island and dripping in atmosphere. A romantic tear-jerker date movie where a couple must travel through time to consummate their love for each other. And here I was with some ass who could not shut up. Jane Seymour and Christopher Reeves finally managed to get together for a fleeting moment, a gentle embrace and then a tentative kiss…

“Oh come on, you know you WANT IT!!!” shouted my date to an unreceptive theatre audience.

I prayed he would spontaneously combust, his smoldering corpse causing enough distraction that I could escape to freedom down Riverside Drive.

Caught Up

All it took was two dates.
     The first, a week after the reunion, was a lunch that turned into dinner, the whole time talking of old friends and teachers and the things they’d once done—old movies, old music, and cars. They talked of dreams they’d shared and promises made, and laughed at fights long forgotten. And, yes, maybe things were moving too fast, but even the familiar rebuff made him smile.
     “So, why did we ever break up?” he wondered.
     Until their second date, when he discovered they’d once again run out of things to say to each other.

A Dinner Table at Night by John Singer Sargent

History

Joan and Sandy had been through a lot together. When Joan’s time came, she knew that Sandy would be very bright in the spectrum that made up the beam of her life flashing before her eyes. She wondered now whether the two of them were actually compatible. These days the bitterness and misunderstanding often outweighed the good times. Had they both changed that much? or were they always like oil and water, but just never realized it? Was it time to move on and treasure the good memories, rather than let the black cloud that hung over them gather strength?

Happy Birthday Mary

Often I find that people do take on traits attributed to their respective zodiac signs. For example, I am a textbook Leo. The calm and frugal Richard is a perfect Taurus. Together we produced the King of the Aries. And then you have the Gemini. They are the avocadoes of the zodiac. Most of them are unpalatable; slow to mature and quick to go off. It’s very rare to find a good one, but when you do, it’s a celebration. Mary is one such fruit. Happy Birthday to you my friend and congratulations on putting the Gem back in Gemini.

Ex-licks

One more birthday is all it might take to sap the last of my enthusiasm for all the gifts and the cake and too much attention. In fact, if you’re wondering what to get me, see if you can’t find a big box of the stuff—enthusiasm, that is—because I’ve burned through most of what little I had. I mean what happened to the days when going out for dinner was exciting (instead of just expensive) and all-you-can-eat was supreme? When did the summer become such a chore? And who wants ice cream if it hurts your teeth?

Fifteen Minutes or so

It took awhile to twig into what was happening. People kept coming up and asking if I needed anything. I was standing right at the buffet, but they wanted to fill my plate for me, or get me a glass of wine. Never had I ever experienced such solicitousness from complete strangers. A photographer danced around me taking pictures. Then I realized they thought I was ‘Her’ – the star of the show for which this party was being thrown. She arrived late, so I enjoyed the attention for awhile. But it was easy to see how tiresome it could become.

Everybody Doesn't Like Something

A DJ from an American music station announced that residents in LA reported experiencing earth tremors but were relieved to find out it was just Kirstie Alley jogging. Hardy-har-har. I wish the media would leave her alone. What if she heard him say that? How funny would that be? It is perverse that such a fat country is so obsessed with losing weight. All those reality shows starring sobbing Chubbies and the succubae that chase them. The average weight for females in America today is 165 pounds. That’s a whole lotta Rosie. Or at least a whole lot of Sara-Lee.

Thank you, I said. You’ve made an old man very happy.

I’d never been asked for ID before, not because I was lucky enough to look old for my age but that I was so straight I’d never even tried to drink underage, watched with tight-assed distain as my friends got wasted, and didn’t really start drinking until well past the scrutiny of suspicious serving staff.
     But to make a long story short, I was carded for the very first time at no less a monument to alcohol consumption than the original Cheers, where everybody knows your name, but they can’t tell a 35 year-old tourist from an 20 year-old student.