Plastic Bags

Every night as she lay in bed wishing for potatoes, Lenore could detect the touch of a rope noosed around her neck. Nevertheless, another night was over, it was now a golden Wednesday morning, and her washing machine was giving off a determined energy that she wanted to harness. It was lovely, so lovely it made her want to squeeze her entire life into a tight red dress surrounded by multi-colored cocktails in shimmering glasses. Ah well, hardly.

There were two bags of chicken bones thawing in the refrigerator. Later she would make stock. Meanwhile, she was waiting — waiting for afternoon, waiting for evening, waiting for the right moment, waiting to get over what couldn't be gotten over, waiting to get better, waiting for signs, waiting for more gumption. She would wait for as long as it took. Her face sagged with all the waiting. In the meantime she tidied up. Dumped the dead coffee grounds, wiped away the cup rings, brushed off the cookie crumbs, shed some of her skin, examined a few sores.

In the past year her private world had intersected with but one of the many fucked up facets of the world at large. To be more precise, the medical world. To be even more precise, the cancer world. To be exact: the breast cancer world. She had entered uncharted waters, and she had made great discoveries. But she didn't yet know what to do with this knowledge. All she had learned—about doctors, about science, about medicine, about health, about healing, about the corruption in the pharmaceutical industry—made her wobble with the weight of too great a burden.

Scary brown death had created an ever-present undertow. The days rolled in and out, regular enough, controlled by the moon and the sun and everything in-between, but then the undertow would appear. She never knew when it would arrive to pull her down, drag her away from the kitchen or bedroom or sidewalk shore.

But why brown? She had nothing against brown, in fact she rather liked it. The color of coffee or rich, fertile soil. Brown oak, brown fir, her dog's brown eyes, her brown suede jacket. Why not, instead, the color of an ocean stripped of light? Why not the color of a fresh, dark bruise?

You couldn't figure out death. Death was a chameleon, a trickster. Blue one day, brown the next. Tomorrow could be apricot death, or chartreuse or cherry. The day after that could be the flat beige of a death bored silly. She had to tidy up, she had to get dressed and eat breakfast. Then she would set the wheels in motion, knock over the first dominoe, feel her life cascade, click click click click click all the way down to the end of the line.

She stared at her copy machine, the wastepaper basket, the stapler, the phone. She had to call the mortgage broker, the moving company, the doctor, her boss. One task after another. A birthday cake loomed, there was too little time for the laundry, the novel, the cracked window pane. She expected no fame at this point in her life. Any grandeur that came to her would arrive through the mundane.

She wanted to wave a magic wand over the grit of life. She wanted to yell out, "Abracadabra, please and thank you!" and be dazzled. She wanted to be wearing a pair of sexy little gloves as she pulled the velveteen rabbit out of today's top hat — so shiny and tall, so impenetrable, so black. She had to make the time to travel out of her body to the stars and back. She had to remember that inside every horrid little mess lived the light at dusk, the sound of rain, the taste of a peach, another chance to get it right, BANG!

What was at the very heart of it all? She often had the feeling that she was driving through a foreign country, but no, she had to admit that she was at home, right here on her own little patch of lawn. The San Francisco fog had put its arms around her and Jack and the life they were creating together. They kept a drawer filled with plastic bags in the kitchen. Every day they reached into the drawer and pulled out more bags. Every day they walked their new pup, Olivia. They smiled at her antics, stroked her head and neck and back, and said "What a good dog you are!"

November had arrived. Lenore had turned 54 in October, Jack had turned 51 and had more gray in his hair now than he did the year before.Much of the time their life revolved around the plastic bags that they saved for scooping up Olivia's poop. Last night they had walked her up to the top of the hill and watched the fog roll down over Twin Peaks while she played with the other dogs. As the fog drifted down on one side of the hill, the full moon rose up on the other. The fog looked like a mystical, magical cloud as it drifted down over the buildings and streets. The moon looked like a pale pumpkin ringed in a halo of mystic mist.

Her blabbering heart trembled. She slid down onto the floor next to the couch, looked into the Olivia's eyes, and listened to the churning of soapy water in the Sears Kenmore agitator.

Comments

[harlan in lalaland]

What a beautiful chapter. I have a feeling death is the color of cabbage soup, with a side of cole slaw, but you don't get to have any cole slaw. Probably this has something to do with us being in LA where we eat at a lot of delis.