A short story on the tension between what we wish we did and how to get there.
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Jay, a skinny middle-aged woman with brittle nerves and a frazzled expression, flew out of her shitfaced dreams, crashed onto the pillow, mouth shoved into lumpy duck down, screams muffled, and then fell fully back into the nightmare of reality, life, whatever you call it. Jay scrambled out of the tangle of white cotton sheets, thinking, this is getting old.
A framed picture of Lizzy, her daughter, taken a few years ago sat on the bedside table, a little dusty. The cat, unfazed by the theatrics, dropped a mouse-like toy on the pillow and began to purr. Jay pulled her close, wrapped her arms around the scruffy bugger, lay down and shut her eyes. A few more minutes. A few more hours please. But the nightmare waved at her through the closed eyelids, as if Lizzy was calling Mom! Mom!
Jay sighed, sat back up, muttering – Fine. Fine. I’ll get up. I’ll go to work. I’ll feed the cat.
The early monsoon rains still fell, a downpour that usually came in July at four o’clock on the hour, had now flooded Silver City from the time she fell into bed and was still coming down hard. Climate change? Oh, don’t be silly, thought Jay with a hint of humor, it’s just a little wet. Outside, a few cars splashed through giant puddles, filling those potholes in the highway through town. Deep enough they were that she’d once stuck a pair of Lizzy’s boots in, top down as if someone had fallen in. The local newspaper had taken a photo for their Neighborhood News section, demanding the roads be fixed in a timely manner. That was three years ago now. Nothing had changed. Everything had changed.
It was Wednesday, wasn’t it? Trash pick-up tomorrow then? Jay stuffed herself into a pair of clean jeans, a nice white blouse, sensible shoes, and tied her hair up. She loved teaching. She had loved teaching. These hangovers and those undergrads at Western University weren’t such a great blend though, what with her headaches and chronic impatience but a paycheck every two weeks paid for the necessary shopping of more booze and pills. Great. Her mother would be proud. Not. The cat jumped up onto the counter, next to the car keys, and demanded to be fed.
– You’re not my cat. Lizzy found you, not me. I don’t even like you.
Jay filled the bowl with dry kibble and another with some milk. – I wish you wouldn’t sleep in my bed. You could use hers, Kitty, she won’t mind.
Jay stood there until Kitty finished her milk. She petted the cat and rinsed the bowl.
Fine. Fine.
The road to work was muddy and slow going in her little Fiat. The rain slapped the windshield and Jay peered through the blurring glass. Jay wanted a drink but perhaps she could wait until lunchtime today? The mail still lay unopened on the passenger seat, official looking, she hadn’t dared to read it last night. She’d meant to. After just one glass of Cabernet, she’d thought that’s when she’d look. She’d forgotten though and had had five drinks, probably more, and then, well, here she is, on her way to work again, to teach other people’s kids as if they didn’t know any better. Well, they didn’t. The record against Jay was unofficial. New job. New co-workers. New beginnings. And a new mailman. He was nice. Young but nice. He’d waited patiently while she’d looked for her glasses so she could sign the confirmation receipt. An average build, brown eyed, dark hair, just a regular young man in a uniform. She’d tried to flirt, forgetting that she wore old blue pajamas with tangled hair, wrinkled skin, and grey eyes sunken with tossing and turning all night long. Well, he’d not reacted at all. Just doing my job, ma’am, kind of an attitude. Oh great, she’s really growing old now. Almost forty and see what happens? No one notices her. No men that is. She was truly alone, and it wasn’t all her fault, was it?
Jay pulled into the car park beside the admin building. Dana, one of the good ones at the school waved at her from across the way. She didn’t wave back until she’d parked. Grabbing her letters and bag, she ran though the rain to the kitchen door. Dana’s domain. She was a good cook, detailed and playful with ingredients. She wore her hair short, walked with a swagger and was a bit of a gentle giant, some six-foot-tall, solid but with the softest hands and secrets of her own, or that’s what Jay imagined. Dana didn’t talk about herself, not normally anyway. Jay burst inside the kitchen with the usual request.
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