Playing Sick and Playing God

A young man returns to his hometown for the funeral of a high school friend.

What makes The Price Is Right such a classic show is really a number of things. However, the most prominent is Bob Barker. He’s so campy, so lively, and so old. He should be sitting in a nursing home, dying, with an IV sticking into his arm, waiting to pass on a deep, dark secret to one of his family members. Instead, there he is, standing up there, parading the same crap jokes over and over again with that smile so wide you can tell that, if you got to know him, he’d be a total jackass. 

I know it seems like I hate Bob Barker, but I don’t. He’s responsible for my childhood. 

All the times I would pretend to be sick just so I could stay home and watch that show, waiting to quote his sign-off with him: “This is Bob Barker reminding you to help control the pet population have your pets spayed or neuteredgoodbyeeverybody!” I even mimicked the way he’d create one giant word out of those last three, as if he couldn’t wait to get off the air. 

My mom would come into my room to wake me up every morning. Unbeknownst to her, I had already been awake and poking myself in the face and neck with a pencil for about an hour. Then, I’d lay it on. 

I’m sick. My stomach hurts. I’m seeing spots. Just like Ferris Bueller taught me. 

She’d look at me and say, “Didn’t you already have chicken pox?” 

“Um…I thought the doctor told me it was a rash.” 

She knew. I knew she knew. But she’d still let me stay home, just so I could catch Bob Barker and those Beauties, with their pantyhose and their shiny nylon outfits. 

And you know that every contestant who didn’t get a chance to win a car felt totally reamed. Contestant number one gets a Ford Escort, and two gets a toaster oven? 

Come on, Bob. 

And even if my mom didn’t know I was sick from that sure-fire Oscar-winning performance, she had to figure it out at about eleven o’clock. Because then The Price Is Right was over, and I would mysteriously start to feel better. 

“You just pretended you were sick so you could stay at home and watch Price Is Right, didn’t you?” 

“No, mom! I swear! I just think it was a 4 hour stomach virus!” 

That’s all behind me now, though. I don’t even watch it anymore. The only time I do is when I go back to my hometown, on days like this, when the sun shines and the breeze blows. You half expect to be whisked away to some meadow somewhere on a day like this, with flower petals and dandelion seeds blowing in the wind and there stands the love of your life, the wind teasing and brushing their hair and whipping their clothes backward at you as you approach from behind, ready to surprise them with a flower, a kiss, and a promise of eternal love and security. 

I’ve already been preparing for the usual onslaught from my mother. I started a week ago. 

“Have you found a girlfriend?” 

“How’s your job?” 

“You don’t get drunk and run around the town square stark naked begging passers-by for money or food or drugs, do you? 

My answers to these questions, in order, will be: no, okay, and maybe. 

The man on the sidewalk is wearing a suit, and there’s a medium-sized cardboard box at his feet. He possesses a short, brown beard and kindly, deep looking eyes. He hands me a small, fake leather bound book about the size of a wallet and asks me if I’d like a copy of the New Testament of Christ.  I take the book because I feel bad if I don’t. I have a drawer full of them in my room, just sitting there. And you know you can’t throw them away, because then God hates you. 

Well, maybe that’s a little harsh. But still, every time I look at them, I say I need to do something with them. Maybe I’ll pass them out to my friends and neighbors, trying to do a good deed. I guess I’d have to grow a beard and get a suit first. 

Cars whiz by me on the road, each one trying to whisper something in my ear about the driver. Because that’s what cars do. They tell you something about the person who owns them. And they do this not only with their looks, but every time you hear the soft whoosh as they go by your ear. You never know what they’re going to say, either. That’s why you have to listen really closely, so you can hear their stories. 

A shiny red Mustang says, “I like my cars like I like my women�"fast.” 

A ragged, dented, lack-of-anything-resembling-a-paint-job Toyota with a decent engine says, “I may not care about my car, but I care about you.” 

An early-90s Nissan says, “I’m going to die two traffic lights from now.” 

An effects-and-graphics laden Mazda whines through its tiny muffler, “Vin Diesel is my favorite actor.” 

But it’s an old Blazer that greets me with hello, winking his hazard flashers at me as I wake him from his slumber. My truck’s name is Maxwell, because I have a very immature habit of naming everything around me, just like they were real and they’re my play friends. 

My computer is named Tommy. 

My football, Michael the Third. Michael the First and Second both perished tragically in freak lawnmower accidents. 

I tell Maxwell not to talk about me, so he doesn’t. I trust him. Or, at least, I hope he’s not talking about me behind my back. I’ve often wondered what Max would say about me if he ever did break his vow of silence. 

He might talk about the time that I was playing James Bond with my friend on the interstate, revving our engines up to 100, dodging traffic like NASCAR racers, flexing our muscles and our masculinity. 

Maybe the time I laid down the back seat and watched the stars with my ex-girlfriend on the side of a country road. 

Or possibly he’d tell everyone that I own every Backstreet Boys album, and am actually a big fan. 

Please, God, not the last one. If anything else, Max. Tell them about some time I almost died, but don’t tell them about the Backstreet Boys. 

* * * * * * * * 

Andrea was always too quiet for me. That was why we never dated. Being loud and obnoxious has its drawbacks. Although it may seem like you’re having fun all the time, you’re always alone and wanting attention. But you can’t get it from someone who’s quiet. They can’t relate. So that’s why I never dated her. But I was her friend, nevertheless. She wasn’t a fashion model, but I still found her attractive. And yeah, before you go there, I know that doesn’t really matter. It’s what’s inside that counts, right? 

We always ended up working together on projects and stuff, on account of our names being so close together in the roll book. And aside from that, we always sat near each other, so it was pretty much a given. So yeah, I knew her pretty well. 

She loved purple. Anything purple, and she was bound to love it. I remember in middle school, when we were talking about the Middle Ages, we had to pair up and design a medieval castle, complete with drawbridge, markings, flags, a keep, and everything that you saw in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. We decided that I would do the floor plan, and she’d color it. I hate coloring stuff. 

Bad mistake. 

Everything in our castle was purple. Purple carpet, purple drapes, purple flags flying with our king’s crest. All the other guys in class had cool looking red and silver castles, and mine was purple. The lights were even made of stained glass, and they were purple too. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I guess purple is an okay color, but it just doesn’t exude masculinity. 

I never thought as we were walking the line at high school graduation, her right before me, that I’d be going to her funeral in under a year. She probably never thought that she would die. I guess her surprise beats mine. 

Funeral parlors are the absolute worst. If a gateway to hell opened up on earth, you can bet it would happen in a funeral parlor. A place where so many ministers, priests, and other spiritual advisors come and speak about the love of Christ and the promise of heaven. No. A funeral parlor is death’s home, and it’s not going anywhere. 

It’s supposed to be comforting. But I’m not comfortable, here in this tiny little chair that’s made to look padded. It’s not, though. I guess actually padding the chair was beyond the realm of the chair designer’s thought process. 

I really don’t recognize anyone here. I knew Andrea all through middle and high school, but I never hung out with her or met any of her family. So they’re all staring at me. Maybe that’s where the comfort of my chair disappeared to�"it was stolen by her family. Or maybe I’m just being metaphorical. 

But finally, Justin shows up. Justin and I grew up next to each other, and he had known Andrea for a while, too. He’s loud like me, but that didn’t stop him from going out with her. 

“Hey, man. What’s up?” I called softly to him. He saw me and trod over, hands in his pockets and shoulders slumped. Justin was an actor. The mood he’s wearing now is overdone sadness. 

“Not much. When did you get back?” 

“Just earlier today.” 

Awkward pause. Except this time, it’s an awkward pause in a funeral home. 

“Yeah.” This is all Justin can say before walking off to look at Andrea’s body, and he says it slowly and drawn out, and he c***s his jaw to one side after the word finally breaks free. I don’t have anything better to do, and I’d be a jerk if I left now, so I just follow him. 

I’ve looked at Andrea’s body four times now. And yet, she does not move. This fact is still sinking into my brain. 

Our bodies are made of clear plastic, and our souls are inside. Then, there’s that solid layer of melanin on top, because we aren’t supposed to let our souls be seen. That’s why we have so many different distractions in life, so many hats to wear. Because we don’t want to show our souls to anybody. 

Andrea’s soul has departed. Her fingers are lifeless, her lips dry, her hair smelling of hairspray from when whoever put her in here tried to make her appear alive. 

God cracked open her plastic case, and her soul flew out. 

“I can’t believe it,” Justin said. “You always figure that stuff like this happens to someone else.” 

“We’re all someone else to someone else, Justin.” I’m trying not to cry. 

We keep looking at her for a second before Justin motions for me to follow him into the hall. I oblige. He leads me around a couple of corners, just looking for a spot with no people. 

“Sorry, I just don’t want to be around everybody. I really didn’t want to come, but I figured I should because…well…” Justin’s words stopped coming out. “I mean, hey, you know me, right?” 

“Yeah.” I was trying not to say that much about it. 

“We started dating again in school.” 

“Really?” 

“Yeah. I mean, nothing serious. Just here and there. It happened really fast, too. Like, about two weeks after she was diagnosed, she was in the hospital dying.” 

Those last six words. 

I’m normally not an emotional person. Really, I’m not. I don’t cry in movies, and I don’t cry when I get hurt. But then, from the funeral home and my friend lying there dead, I felt like crying my glands out, to make sure that all the moisture molecules came forth. 

She was in the hospital, dying. 

“Of course, I can’t say I didn’t see it coming, but still, you don’t expect it to happen this soon.” 

“What?” 

“You know, with the, um, investigation and the guy and all?” 

I hadn’t heard anything about it. I was just home and heard that she died. We lost touch in college. 

“No, I don’t.” 

“Really? It was in all the papers and everything.” 

“Well, I go to school so far away, I don’t see the papers. What happened?” 

Justin sighed, long and deep, trying to delay telling me as long as he could. “She had just started seeing the guy maybe two or three months ago. She told me she met him at a club that we all get into without ID.” 

I was just nodding Justin through the story. I didn’t want to say anything. 

“So he picks her up, and he turns out to not really be that great of a guy. He’s into stuff he shouldn’t be into.” 

“Like what?” 

“I don’t know what all he did. But it wasn’t good. Either way, though, I started to notice stuff about her was different after a week or two. She stopped coming to class and everything, and when I did see her on campus, she looked terrible.” 

Still nodding. 

“Finally, one day, she said the guy just left her. After that, she got tested, and that’s when she found out. It was from him.” 

“How’d they know?” 

“They had a file. She wasn’t the only one it had happened to.” 

“File? What? What do you mean?” 

At this point, Justin pulls in close to me and glances quickly around. “The guy killed her. They say he knew he had it.” 

My eyes shift to autopilot and start floating in my head. My inner ear spins. I lose track of exactly what I’m looking at, but when I figure it out again, it’s Justin. He’s gazing at me like he’s just told me something beautiful, the way you look at your lover when you tell them, “I love you.” His mouth is a perfect line, cutting across his face, and he’s blinking faster than he should be. 

“No,”  I say.  It's the only thing my mouth will form. 

Justin just nods his head a few times, slowly, like he’s thinking. “They don’t know where he is. Some guy from out of state. Cops came through a few days after Andrea was in the hospital and demanded all this information from the doctors and everything. The papers ended up saying he came into town a few days before driving some kind of truck, and on the last day he was seen in town, they found the truck in a ditch, and someone’s little white Mustang was missing.” 

I have so much to say now, but I still don’t want to talk. Justin has just told me the cruelest joke I’ve ever heard. Yeah. And I’m just finding a way to deal with the fact that my friend is a total jerk. 

Justin and I not only grew up next to each other, he’s been my best friend since before I knew what a best friend was. We played together, hung out together, and had fun. This was our routine for years, and it most definitely did not involve stuff like what he has just told me. The look on his face, that lovey look, is still there. 

He’s not kidding. 

Andrea, the quiet little girl. The girl in the front of the class. The one that had the locker right below mine. The one that turned around to me in the line at graduation and said, “I’ll miss you. I like you.” The one that smiled and kissed me on the cheek just then. 

This actually happened. This man, this person, took her. 

He cracked the case to her soul, and Andrea flew out. 

Justin’s still looking at me. 

I sat down, feeling incensed and destroyed simultaneously. Her death was not a death at all, but rather a murder. Murder can mean so much, and in this case, it means that Andrea’s mother is home alone tonight, truly alone. I lost a friend. Justin will miss his friend, too. And the guy that did this, he’s a killer, a violator, and a stealer rolled into one.  He is evil. That’s what this means. 

I’m still rather speechless at this point, my jaw hanging just below my top lip. Justin sighed again. “I’m sorry, dude. I thought you knew.” 

“So they have no idea where this guy is?” My voice speaks on its own. I don’t know how it came out. 

Justin’s lips tightened up, and those little bumps formed on his chin from the excess skin. Solemnly, he said, “No.” 

I stand up, and walk back very deliberately into the room where Andrea’s casing is sitting. Coming back up to her body, I finally start to tear up. When the wall of the coffin cannot hide her lifeless face anymore, that’s when I lose it. 

One sob escapes. Another. Another. I’m snorting and crying. 

She’s still just lying there, with her mouth pulled back slightly. She looks like she’s smiling, but I know she isn’t. Sparkling purple fingernail polish and rings on her fingers. Soft, flowery, purple-colored daisies printed on her dress. My body bends at the waist over her body and then gives up, and I start watering the flowers on her dress. 

* * * * * * * * 

“Mom?” 

“Mm-hmm?” She’s cooking eggs. 

“Why are you scrambling them all? I thought you knew I liked them over easy.” 

My mom stops for a moment, in thought. She then tries to cover herself. “I thought you started eating them scrambled before you went off to school.” 

“No, Mom. I didn’t.” 

Her face says, “I’m sorry,” before her mouth catches up and does the same. “Can you still eat these, or do you want me to fix some more?” 

I feign annoyance. “I guess I can eat these.” I smile, just to make sure she gets my joke. She does, and starts so scrape the eggs back out on my plate. 

“What time are you heading home?” 

And so it begins. After this, she’ll start running over all the errands she has to do today. She will have to go get some groceries, buy Dad some new pants because he ripped a pair at work, go to the bank, eat lunch in there somewhere, and get the oil in the car changed. Then, she will punctuate her list with, “I just thought you would come with me, that’s all,” even though I told her a week ago that I couldn’t stay all day because I had homework. I tell her this again, and she just gives up. “Okay. I understand.” She smiles at me. “We’ll do it some other time.” 

I still haven’t said a lot this morning. I haven’t spoken very much since I found out about Andrea. 

And, of course, moms are psychic. “You sad about that girl?” 

I pause, trying to gauge exactly how I feel. I tell my Mom all this. “Yeah. I’m sad about the whole situation.” 

She’s stirring gravy now, each syllable of her speech punctuated by the metal-on-plastic scrape of the spoon swirling the gravy around the bowl. “It happens. We’re just not used to it happening around here.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Besides, you know she’ll be okay.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“God’s got her now. He’ll take care of her.” 

I doubt it. God didn’t take her, I decided.  Someone else did. 

I take a bite of my eggs and start to chew, thinking about God. But then I decide, for the better, that thoughts like these aren’t meant to be had over breakfast. Be honest: do you really want to wake up trying to discover the meaning of life? I don’t. 

“Mom, where’s the TV remote? It’s almost 10.” 

“Oh, that’s right! Price is Right is coming on.” She picks up the closest remote and keys the button at the top, that little red button of joy, but nothing happens. “Oh, shoot. I think the remote’s out of batteries.” 

“Hurry up, mom!” My inner, immature child part takes over, and my voice reverts to eight-year-old status. “It’s almost on!” 

My mom jogs through the house, and I hear the utility room door squeal open with a sense of urgency. Cardboard tears, plastic snaps, and in a few seconds, Mom re-emerges with the remote. “Okay, let’s try it now.” I’m actually getting pretty excited at this point, so I get up to leave the table with my scrambled eggs in tow. The television flashes as it wakes up. 

That time when you turn the TV on is always a surprise. There you are, waiting for it to warm up, and you’re wondering, “What will this box bring me today?” The television knows this, so it’s fade-in is always extra long and drawn out, trying to tease you into watching longer than you planned on in the first place. That’s also why the sound takes so long to kick in�"it’s the hook that catches us, like sea bass. 

“Who is talking? What’s going on? We’ll find out, after these messages!” This is the thought process of an average human being when a television turns on. 

Today, my thought process was proceeding down a similar track. Until a few seconds later, when my thoughts changed from wonder and excitement to confusion. 

The TV was trying to catch me with static seaweed. 

For the second time in as many days, I was speechless. My feet, propped on the ottoman in the floor, fell limp. “What’s wrong?” 

“I don’t know,” my mom replied. She raised the remote again, and changed the channel. The TV flashed again, still trying to wake up. However, the only thing I saw when the TV finally finished brightening were those little white and black dots like bugs, millions of them, swirling around a light. 

“Is the cable out?” 

Mom thought. “I don’t know, dear. We didn’t have a storm or anything. Let me check the other room.” She walked, determined, into her bedroom. I, desperate for the sweet sound of Bob Barker’s voice, followed her. 

She entered the room and went straight for the remote, picking it up and pressing the “on” button in one motion. And, yet again, we were greeted by static. 

“I guess you were right,” Mom agrees with me. “Cable’s out.” 

My face and the boyish excitement on it fade away, not wanting to let go. I sit down on Mom’s bed and stare at the TV. In a last gasp, my inner child says, “No Price is Right?” 

Mom shakes her head and tosses the remote down on the bed beside me. “No, sweetie. I’m sorry.” 

I’m just staring at the TV, watching the flies swarm and buzz, wallowing in my own self-pity. The set doesn’t change, no matter how hard I wish it to. Bob Barker has the day off. 

Author's Note

Hope you enjoy, and feel free to comment/review!