Eating Peas with a Knife. 2,300

About a tired old lady.

She walks in beauty, like the night	 
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;	 
And all that 's best of dark and bright	 
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:	 
Thus mellow'd to that tender light	         
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

The heavenly cadence of Lord Byron cycles through my mind as I stand, looking through a high window at a sleeping city.  A reflection in the glass, backlit by an ornate bedside lamp, shows me a white-haired woman long, long years past her prime.

The bottom corner of a floor-to-ceiling glass door sticks as I slide it back, admitting sounds and acrid smells of traffic twelve-stories below.

I stare for long moments, trying to count lights in buildings across a wide boulevard.  Since I've forgotten my glasses, many of them merge together into blots of hot glowing embers.

Turning, I walk back to an overly-stuffed chair to plop heavily into its soft confines -- fitted to my own outline by many years of use.  These days, due to cancer, the outline is very loose, forcing me to wiggle a bony  butt around to find comfort.  Even that faint effort causes my breath to come in gasps.

"Mrs. Evens," the doctor told me earlier today, "that pain you feel is only the beginning.  It will get much worse.  All I can do is give you these pills.  Please, don't take them unless it becomes simply unbearable: even then, be careful.  They're very strong and might mess with your thinking."

"How is that?" I asked. "After all, I'm already taking almost twenty pills in the morning, twelve in the afternoon and a further ten at night."  I laughed. “I think I should know all possible effects by now.”

"They have different affects on different people," he told me. "Some no visible effect at all. Others wake up at night with hallucinations, such as large spiders walking on the walls and that sort of thing."

"I don't mind spiders, Dr. Livingston. Where I grew up, you sat next to them in the outhouse every time you relieved yourself.  I even gave some names and asked them to pass the paper when I was through. 'Elmer, honey, please bring me a sheet from that Sears catalog?' I would ask.  That was when we were out of corncobs and had to use paper.  My butt was raw from using those corncobs." I could see my attitude surprised him. "That's one thing we had plenty of on that farm.  Corncobs. Them and spiders."

Well, so far at least, no friendly giant spiders named Elmer have called on me.  I do find myself thinking about my Alfred, though.

Alfred was my husband of thirty years.  He passed away twenty . . . yes, twenty-one years back. He was not a very good man, in retrospect, but one hell of a lot better than the other choices.  At least his family had money.  A lot of money.  

Ha-ha.  I remember the wedding ceremony.  How embarrassed I was sitting with my family from the poor side of the tracks.  But that feeling was soon overshadowed by my own flubs in etiquette.  When I used the wrong fork to eat my salad, Alfred's mother looked at me as though at something out of a zoo.  

Seeing her face, I made a point of eating my peas with a butter knife, rolling them expertly down the blade and into my mouth.  Eating them that way was a skill us farm kids used to practice to shock our own parents.  I've done it many times since, especially in fancy restaurants.

Tough decisions.  I must review my will.  I made it out years ago but figure I should check it once more before ...  before I pass.  My memory isn't what it used to be.  For instance, I see I've left $50,000 dollars to my younger brother Jeffrey -- and he's been dead for the last two years.  There's no reason in hell the strumpet he married should have anything.  

A niece named Marilyn finished college and moved to New York to work at an ad agency. She might as well have the condo I'm in now.  No other relatives live within a thousand miles of this place.  Nor do they visit very often.  The older ones that are left are in pretty much my own state, not able to move around much.  The younger ones have better things to do than visit me.  I understand, and don't hold it against them. Some people do have a life to live -- while some of us don't.

I pause, listening to traffic noises far below.  I often open that door, even in the winter, to remind me of my upbringing.  We get so used to central air-conditioning these days, forgetting the time before it was invented.  Those times when you kept windows open on all four sides of a home in order to have a draft coming through.  Memories of noisy electric fans and farmhouses with many small rooms flit by my mind. Small rooms because they were easier and cheaper to heat with a wood stove than larger ones during those cold, cold winters.  

In the dead of winter, we all lived and slept in one or two rooms, depending on guests, in order to save on fuel.  Stored outside, the wood -- cut by hand -- would become damper as the winter progressed, building up soot in the pipes when we burned it.

Every once in a while, Mama would take a broomstick, thumping the pipes to cause a cloud of smoke inside the stove, much of it leaking out to make us kids cough.  Then the stove would work better for awhile.

I remember wearing heavy work shoes in the winter, sitting back on a kitchen chair in front of a pot-bellied stove in the parlor, shoes against its surface while I worked on my homework.

Soon I could feel the heat through thick leather soles, knowing it was time to take my toasted legs down.  Sometimes, engrossed in the studies, I would wait too long, finally taking down soles burning and smoking from the stove, thumping them to the floor.  "Ouch!" I would exclaim, hot leather meeting already warm feet.  Those were good days -- almost as pleasurable as the first years with my Alfred.

One shade the more, one ray the less,	 
Had half impair'd the nameless grace	 
Which waves in every raven tress,	 
Or softly lightens o'er her face;	  
Where thoughts serenely sweet express	 
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

Those first few years were the best, before his anger became apparent.  When he still treated me like a lady and not a mere possession.  It was a whirlwind of experiences as I became, at first,  amazed and later used to the attention money can bring. People who had snubbed me before became my best friends.  Others, who had ignored me or looked me askance, now waited on me hand and foot.

Gloria, the manager of the Grand Hotel, a place that had formerly twice rejected my application for a cook's helper job, treated me with deference, always asking if I needed anything.  Ah, yes, beautiful Gloria the b***h.  I'll get to her later -- where she belongs.

We lived at that hotel for twenty years, in a penthouse suite.  More rooms than I could count, and I didn't even have to clean them.  There were people to do it for me.  All to the good, as I was never very good at cleaning my bedroom at home.

As I said, Alfred was -- at first -- the perfect husband.  At least on the surface.  I was so absorbed in myself that I have no idea when he started to drift; maybe he had always drifted?  My biggest failing is that I can't have children.  Generic or something with my plumbing, but I can't have any.  

Alfred wanted one, and wouldn't hear of adopting.  "I want to pass on my line, not take potluck with some a*****e's mistake," he would tell me. "Some idiot forgets to put on his rubbers -- and I pay?  No thank you. If we can't have our own, the hell with it."

I could tell he was disappointed, but since he didn't push the issue I soon put it out of my head -- having my own projects going.  I found I was good at handling the family finances and took investing courses at a local college, even tripling his fortune.

Alfred wasn't grateful, though.  Always having had money, he wasn't very interested in the subject.  It was simply something that was and had always been, not of any real importance.  That’s the way many of those born with it are.

One morning while I was having breakfast with Joanne, one of the maids -- we had become close friends by then -- she dropped a bombshell.

"I don't know how to tell you," she whispered to me over coffee.  I think she really enjoyed it though -- I would have. "When I was cleaning the manager's suite the other day, I found your husband in bed with her.  Both were sound asleep." She carefully scanned my face, obviously waiting for a reaction -- one she never saw.  "I had to look twice to make sure, but it was him."

"Alfred and Gloria?  No matter, I've known about it a long time.  It doesn't bother me any,"  I lied to Joanne, secretly simmering inside.

Not from love, mind you.  But, probably because of my poor background -- and certainly due to my financial training -- I feared a divorce. That and losing my lifestyle.  Besides, we rarely slept together by then and he spent a lot of time away "on business."  Come to think of it, so did Gloria.

Back on the farm, we occasionally faced problems with rats and mice, sometimes coons and tribes of wild rabbits.  So we kept things around to trap  . . .  or poison them.  Several times a year, we would set traps and spread those chemicals on meat and other foods.  So I was conversant with many of those products.

I began using one of them on my poor Alfred, watching him weaken as time went by.  Slowly, but surely, he faded away.  The expensive doctor neither knew nor suspected anything.

"I don't feel like doing much today, honey," he would tell me soon after breakfast. "Will you call Mr. Thompson at Thompson's Gallery for me?  And get me another appointment, please? I really want that painting."

"Of course, dear," I'd tell him, holding his hand. "You get plenty of rest."

Well, he is getting plenty of rest, twenty years so far, he-he.  I smile.  I hope he isn't angry anymore.  Alfred was never one to hold a grudge very long.  He should be over it by now. In any case, I’ll be able to ask him myself, soon.

I feel that pain coming back. It reminds me that I haven't taken my evening pills.  So I swallow the ten pills and a triple helping of the new pain pill.  No need to husband them anymore. Not after tonight. I already have flighty, ha-ha-ha, plans for tonight.

Passing a telephone, I pick it up to call downstairs.

"Trina?  Is Tommy still there?  He hasn't left yet, has he?"  Tommy Travis works in the office, and usually stays late.  He’s a notary public, stamp and all. "Will you see if he has time to come up for a few minutes?"

Tommy, a large efficient-looking young man, comes up and witnesses changes I've made in my will, initialing them and signing his name at the bottom.  He squeezes his stamp, and all is legal. 

"If you want, I can take it down for my secretary to type up tomorrow morning," he volunteers.

"No, that's all right, Tommy," I tell him as I escort him to the door, feeling my heart beat faster from the effort of walking that far. "We can do that later.  I wanted to go over it again and thought it would be a good idea to have it signed tonight.  You never know what might happen."  I let him out and close the door, sighing.  I walk onto the balcony, take a long look  down at a sidewalk far below.

While I'm up, I put away my will, notations standing out on its otherwise pristine pages, signed and initialed by me with Tommy as witness.

Feeling silly about being hungry, I go to the refrigerator and make up a roast beef sandwich. On a whim, I open a can of peas, even though I know they'll never be finished. 

Sitting at a little round table on the chilly balcony, staring out through open space at the city, I eat the sandwich with no effort -- finding it filling.  But, although I try, my palsied hands can no longer roll peas down the length of my knife.  They roll off and onto the floor, splatting or bouncing as they hit.

Knowing it’s not strictly necessary, I get down on both knees, tears in my eyes, and pick up each errant veggie.  It was, in a real sense, my last brush with girlhood.  Even with the help of the railing, it takes me minutes to get back to my feet, tired bones creaking in protest.

It's time. No need to linger.  I was never very good with physical pain, but know it will increase.  Then it will get even worse as the days, horrible days, advance.  I walk closer, leaning over the railing to watch cars speed by, far below.  The pills help it all seem so impersonal, so surreal.  

I lean out farther, taking a deep breath -- at least as deep as I'm still capable -- a light breeze rustling my gown and feeling cool on old wrinkled skin.  After all, it's a long ways down. But it soon becomes so much closer -- as I fall, anxious to see Alfred again.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,	 
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,	 
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,	  
But tell of days in goodness spent,	 
A mind at peace with all below,	 
A heart whose love is innocent! 
( Alfred, Lord Byron.)

The End.
Charlie

Author's Note

If you read the entire story, please leave a comment.

Reviews

[hvysmker]

Thanks, Mr Roarke. Occasionally I like to add poetry to a story. To bad I'm such a bad poet. Funny because my first published work was a haiku in a Japanese newspaper contest. I won second prize.

[roarke]

Hi Charlie, I liked this story. I also liked the way you constructed it, using mixed elements to assemble your character, her life, condition, range of perceptions. I felt it lended to a very rich and complex character. Well done.