Homo-pathic Medicine (copyright 1994)

Axel Orion was the most yearned for male in Cape Cod. Pert young girls loitered about Bob’s Convenience Store in their breath-constricting jeans, contorting their wiry, bumpy bodies into perversely juvenile, provocative poses, dying to run into him. Women his own age frequented Axel’s favorite bars every night, rapidly becoming alcoholics, anticipating an appearance from the delicious twenty-six year old. Single middle-aged women, dressed like the teeny-boppers, confidently approached him, proffering their bodies with uncomfortably straightforward suggestions. Lonely, divorced women took obsessive walks past his house. If his car was there they took three or four slow walks hoping he would notice and come running out. If the car was not in the driveway, the lonely women covered all the local bars in the evening looking for him. After the bars were closed, they walked past his house yet again, shaking with grief and jealousy if he and his car never came home. Married women with stunted social lives planned elaborate neighborhood barbecues just as an excuse to invite Axel, who never showed. Weekend after weekend he botched their amorous designs -- swinging hopeful, optimistic moods into dense dark balls of bitterness that added more weight to their moribund marriages.

Axel’s interest was finally piqued in the convenience store when his hand accidentally swished a wondrously firm bottom encased inside the fashionable hole that covered almost entirely the backside of someone’s jeans. He felt a wave of electricity spasm in his groin only a fraction of a second before the backhanded blow across his face.

Before recovering from the impact of evoking such a negatively passionate response, the door was thrust open -- its bells jingling -- and the person was gone.

“Andy,” he asked the store clerk, “who was that?”

“Who was who?” the clerk replied.

“Some lady slapped me.”

“I don’t know, man. I was in the back. Didn’t see.”

“Yeah, well I’m going to go find her.”

He left the store, but the parking lot was empty.

He lay in bed late that night piecing together an image of her face. He could feel the smoothness of the palm of her hand and her angry, burning fingertips that stung across his face one at a time like fleshy dominoes. Yes, she had wild red curly hair.

He relived the echo of the slap. She had skin with the diaphanous quality of silk.

He could feel the prickling of his skin after the slap. She had small giving breasts that could fit perfectly into a champagne glass.

The current ran through his loins. She had long copper lacquered fingernails that would trail with threatening lustiness down his back.

Axel couldn’t wait for night to fall. Each night he went to bed earlier and earlier so that he could lay in the dark and add on to his image of this chimerical woman who had rejected him.

Every day after work Axel returned to the convenience store to wait for the phenomena that created this craving inside him. Every day of waiting and finding no one became agonizing, until he could no longer sleep. He went to work thinking of her, left early every day to go to the convenience store, where he stayed until closing. She never showed. He never slept. Each waking moment was burdened by increasing exhaustion and anguish. Every new day became a new nemesis to survive until the next one came along with another despised rising sun.

When his friend Andy took him to the hospital, Axel had lost nearly twenty pounds. The blueness of his eyes had been overshadowed by the black circles surrounding them.

The doctors could not ascertain any reason why this was happening and Axel had stopped talking altogether. They plugged him up to an intravenous apparatus, ordering mental competency tests to determine his possible status as a resident of Brewster Psychiatric Hospital.

It was around midnight when Axel opened his eyes to an ass contained inside white stretch pants that could belong to only one person. He struggled to focus in the dark on the nurse who was resetting his IV. He saw the curls falling down the back and a slice of moonlight illuminated the unmistakable copper coloring.

“It’s you,” he whispered.

The nurse turned around and stared blankly.

“I know it’s you. I haven’t been able to think of anything but you since the day you slapped me in the store. Please. Just let me look at you.”

“Oh yeah,” the nurse whispered. “I thought you looked familiar.”

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I’ve been...obsessed with you since.... you electrified me in a way that no one has ever done before. I know it sounds absurd... it was like a chemical reaction.... no, that’s such a cliché... it was like...well, that is exactly what it was. Jesus, I’m making a fool of myself...”

“No you’re not,” the nurse whispered, and taking Axel's hand, reached over and turned on the light, illuminating both their faces.

Axel swallowed harshly and snapped his head quickly to one side to avoid looking again at the nurse.

“This is impossible,” Axel said.

Axel slowly turned his head back.

And faced him.

********************

I can’t be a fag, Axel thought as the nurse turned to leave. His eyes lingered on the retreating rearend of the nurse. Stop that! He shrieked inside his head. Jesus Christ, I’m a fucking faggot.

“Get out of here!” He screamed. “GET OUT! GET OUT!” The nurse quickly did as asked and Axel pulled the covers over his head and curled up into a fetal position.

As soon as he was pronounced physically able, Axel agreed to seek the help of a psychiatrist who worked out of her house on Minister’s Prim. Her name was Dr. Deirdre, a petite, freckled woman with prematurely silver hair down to her knees -- although, during business hours, she twirled it up tightly into a bun that hovered nearly half a foot above her head. She had only recently been licensed -- Axel was only her second case -- but her eyes glowed with sincerity and her brain was filled with interesting theories on how to disentangle the piles of knotted thinking that clouded the minds of her fellow human beings.

“Axel,” she said after listening to his general hysteria over three sessions. “If it makes you feel any better, I can tell you... you are not homosexual.”

“But you heard what happened. I touched her... his butt... I dreamed about him... I nearly went crazy over a man’s butt, goddammit! How can you be so sure? What if I’m gay, man? I’d rather kill myself.... I am, aren’t I? Tell me the truth. Stop lying to me, goddammit!” He leaned forward, putting his head between his knees.

Dr. Deirdre sighed inwardly and -- in spite of her deeply feeling eyeballs penetrating Axel’s gloomy head -- thought, God, men are so fucked up.

“Axel,” she said and leaned over, lightly touching his knee. “Believe me, if you were gay, you would know. You just experienced -- in a more obvious way -- what is inherent in the human race. To some degree, everyone is attracted to their own sex. This is not an illness. You masturbate, don’t you? You touch your own penis and you like it, right? Why wouldn’t you wonder about someone else’s? Pardon me, I’m getting sidetracked. What I’m saying is that those feelings you experienced are not part of your problem. Your biggest problem, Axel, is that you’re homophobic.”

“Homophobic?” Axel lifted his head slightly from between his knees. “You mean, every time I see a gay person I’m going to get dizzy and have trouble breathing? Will I faint? What if I faint? What if I faint and he touches me while I’m unconscious? Jesus Christ Almighty, this is the most awful thing that’s ever happened to me...”

Dr. Deirdre suppressed an urge to roll her eyes. “Time’s up, Axel. We’ll continue this at our next meeting.”

She walked Axel to the door and watched him through the window as he got into his car. Just then, Dr. Deirdre’s identical twin sister walked in.

“So, what’s his problem?”

“He’s afraid he might be gay, but he’s not.”

“Jesus, not another one,” Sheila sighed. “What an asshole.”

“Yeah.”

They put on their coats and left to go shopping for the rest of the day.

********************

At their next meeting, Axel seemed more subdued, almost easygoing.

“You seem....different since I saw you last, Axel,” Dr. Deirdre said reflectively.

“I am, Dr. Deirdre. I’ve come to terms with some things.”

“That’s good, Axel. Why don’t you tell me about it.”

“There’s not much to say. Just that I don’t have a problem any more.”

“I’m not quite sure what you mean. Do you mean that you’ve come to terms with your sexuality?”

“What I’m saying is, so what if I’m homophobic? This is Cape Cod, man. Except for that nurse, who I’m going to stay away from, and except for Provincetown, which I’m going to stay far far away from, guys aren’t gay here. I don’t know any gays. I mean, if you’re afraid of heights, stay away from cliffs.”

Dr. Deirdre carelessly allowed a loud sigh to escape.

“Jesus, Dr. Deirdre! What, am I boring you?” Axel sat up indignantly.

“No, no,” the doctor quickly replied. “It’s asthma.”

“Oh. Okay.” Axel sat back relieved.

“Axel, what if you’re standing at the top of a cliff and you don’t know it?”

“What do you mean? How could I not know that when I look down, there’s a mile of air between me and the ground? Shit, that’s just stupid.”

“Close your eyes, relax, listen to my voice, and try to imagine as vividly as possible everything that I say.”

“All right.” The patient did as he was told.

“It is night and you are walking...you feel an overwhelming urge to stop right where you are...the night air feels so good you want to inhale it all in....the hoot of an owl fills your lonely heart...you lift your head towards the sky and gaze at the stars...you realize that in this very spot you are experiencing the most peaceful moment of your life. You look down, and you suddenly realize you are standing at the very edge of a cliff, and that same cliff you’ve been afraid of all your life, was, for a moment, the only place you ever wanted to be. When you didn’t know it was a cliff, you loved that cliff. Now you know it is a cliff, and you can love it now too.”

Axel kept his eyes closed. A few minutes elapsed before he opened them and sat up straight, facing the doctor.

“That was beautiful....Deirdre. May I call you that?”

“Yes.”

Before leaving the room, Axel leaned over and gave the doctor a lingering kiss on the cheek. “I like you, Deirdre. What you said is actually pretty flaky, but you have a nice voice when you’re telling a story.”

After Axel left, Sheila came into the room and sat down.

“Any change?”

“Yeah, right. Does anybody?” Dr. Deirdre looked out the window watching her patient’s car turn out of the driveway. “He’s coming on to me.”

“He’s got a great ass. You gonna go for it?”

“Well, I’m going to use his beauty to his advantage. I’ve got a great idea and I’m positive it will modify his behavior towards homosexuality.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, but are you gonna go for it?”

They left the house arm in arm, their laughter ringing through the night air as they disappeared down the road.

********************

At the next session, Axel walked quietly into the room as Dr. Deirdre stood with her back towards him looking out the window. She heard him but pretended not to until he put his hand gently on her shoulder. Still she did not move, at which point Axel -- who was very used to this sort of thing -- rested his other hand on the small of her back. She turned around, bringing the tips of their noses together.

Dr. Deirdre touched the tip of his nose with her tongue, he wrapped his arms around her and they smashed their lips together mightily. They kissed each other’s lips, slathered their tongues together, smeared lips across cheeks to mutter upon the lobes of ears -- the crunch of the arms lessened and hands slipped up and down backs to grab buttocks -- faces reddened and Axel hardened. Dr. Deirdre’s hand moved to the stone mound of Axel’s jeans, and that was Axel’s cue to do the same. He slid his fingers expertly up Dr. Deirdre’s thigh, sliding her skirt up with his thumb and cupped his hand over something very hard -- something very hard and round and big. Before he had a chance to pull his hand away with horror, a black and white buzz filled his ears and eyes, his horny heat exploded into buckets of white cold sweat, and he fainted.

********************

In the next few minutes, while Sheila helped him to the couch and applied a cold compress to Axel’s temples, Dr. Deirdre retreated to the bathroom. She lifted up her skirt, pulled her pantyhose down to her knees, reached into her jockey shorts, and retrieved the balled up pair of sweat socks that she had placed there before Axel’s visit. She pulled her pantyhose back on and turned the sink faucet on to wash her hands and splash cold water on her face. She looked into the mirror as she dried her cheeks and tightened the bun on her head. After scrutinizing her appearance closely, she pulled back a bit and gave herself a hard look in the mirror. Okay, Deirdre, she thought. That was a harsh thing to do, but it had to be done. The sincerity in her eyes disappeared and she could hold it in no longer. She burst out into laughter -- so loud she turned the faucets on high and flushed the toilet to drown out the noise. What a great fucking job I have! She thought gleefully.

***************

After Sheila ushered the very dazed and confused Axel out to his car -- not forgetting to remind him of his next scheduled appointment -- she returned inside to sit down on the couch next to her sister.

“Deirdre...” Sheila leaned back and rested her arm on the back of the couch and sighed.

“Yes, Sheila.” They smiled broadly at each other.

“Do you think it worked? Do you really think he’ll come back? I mean, why would he? You freaked that kid out.”

“Yeah, well. He needed it. His life is so fucking easy. Men like him need to have their stupid macho ideals shaken up every once in awhile. He’ll come back after he’s had time to work things out. If anything, he’ll come back to yell at me. He’ll get the anger out. He needs to release a lot of pent up hostilities and that’s what I’m here for. It’s not like I’m actually going to feel anything when he does.”

“No,” Sheila said quietly, shaking her head. “You wouldn’t feel anything.”

“That’s also what I’m here for.”

Sheila poured some coffee into her sister’s cup, then sat back resting her head. She stared at the ceiling.

“Look Sheila, you didn’t even finish high school so this is tough for you to understand...” Sheila’s mouth tightened momentarily, but she quickly nodded agreeably. “For one thing, Axel needs to know that there are a lot more gay people out there than he realizes. He’ll never know that a lot of his friends or members of his family are gay because he’s the sort of person that keeps them in the closet.”

“Good speech!” Sheila clapped her hands once. “Very politically correct -- although your method certainly was not. How will this help him?”

“It won’t!” Dr. Deirdre laughed. “But it’ll sure scare the shit out of him!” She paused a minute and then spoke seriously. “Sheila, I wanted him to recognize his humanity -- his innate sense of sexuality -- everyone’s sexuality -- everyone’s right to his own sense of sexuality. When he comes to terms with that, he’ll have healthier attitudes to both men and women. I was making him confront his fears -- exposing him to his fears. He’ll find out that it’s not so bad.”

“What if he finds out that he needs to jump off a bridge?”

“Well....I tried. Shit happens.” The doctor’s sister stared at her intently.

********************

That night, Axel got no sleep. He slipped under sleep and looked out onto dreams that he was not a part of -- as if he were laying face up an inch below water looking through the ripples out to the real world, but not being a part of it, and not so submerged in the water that he was swimming with the life that belongs there.

Was he gay? He was attracted to the woman whom he fondled, but all along he was attracted to a man. At about 4 a.m. he rolled out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom to submerge his head in a sink of cold water and face the day. He decided to jump into a cold shower instead and it was very refreshing. He got out of the shower, toweled himself dry and went to the full length mirror where he stared at himself naked for a full minute. As he stared, he began to harden. He fainted dead away on the pale blue shaggy bath mat.

********************

I’m a fag, Axel realized when he awoke. Over the next week, every time he passed a mirror, the black and white buzz filled his senses and he passed out.

********************

When he had initially left Dr. Deirdre’s office, he absolutely had no intention of returning. He would call the police, or the Better Business Bureau, or no -- the American Psychiatric Association to report her. But what would he say? They would laugh at him. No, he could tell no one. He would just have to pull himself together -- be the way he was before all these living homosexual nightmares started taking place in his life. But that was impossible. He couldn’t function if he was constantly passing out from a total encompassing fear of himself. He wasn’t simply homophobic, he was claustrophobically homophobic. How could he possibly live a normal life being homosexual and experiencing claustrophobia attacks from feeling closed in behind his own body and psyche? He had no choice but to go back to her.

********************

“You knew I would come back, didn’t you Dr. Deirdre?”

“Tell me what makes you say that, Axel.” Dr. Deirdre’s warm, penetrating eyes looked deeply into her patient’s.

“Why do you pretend you’re a woman? Was it just for me? Do you do it for all your patients?”

“You’re my only patient.”

“Excuse me?”

“What I just said. Also, I really am a woman. That was a pair of socks you felt.”

“Excuse me?”

Silence ensued, and Axel stared at his psychiatrist in disbelief, but Dr. Deirdre waited calmly. It wasn’t her time to talk. Axel needed to talk.

“You know...Deirdre, all this time, you’ve just been laughing at me.”

“That’s not so, Axel. I take your problems very seriously. I don’t think you realize how tough my job is.”

“Your JOB? YOUR JOB?! This is no job to you...you’re getting your jollies off of me! I thought I was screwed up, but you...you are perverse...satanic....”

“That’s it, Axel. Let it out. I hear you.”

“You’ve listened to my soul...you’ve sucked into my vulnerabilities and eaten me alive...”

“I hear you, Axel...”

“You’re not hearing me goddammit! You’re devouring me!”

He ran over to her and with a single psychotic leap of adrenaline, snapped her neck.

An hour passed before Axel headed towards the door after a heavy fulfilling nap on the couch. The door opened and Sheila stood staring at the body on the floor.

“You fucked up piece of shit!” She yelled, and walked over to the boy slapping him fiercely across the face.

Axel stood motionless staring into the woman’s eyes. “You’re so beautiful,” he said. “I think I’m in love with you...”

Sheila walked over to the table where her sister’s notepad and pen lay, picked them up and sat in her sister’s chair.

“Sit down,” she ordered Axel. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

THE END

Old Friend (copyright 1989)

I could have helped it. Maybe. But that weight…an uncompromising inertia kept me pinned down, looking towards upcoming spaces of time waiting their turn to be filled.

I lit a cigarette and propped a pillow up behind me – listened to a scratched, peanut butter and jelly fingerprinted Billy Holliday croak out “In My Solitude” – took my index finger – the one I’d been using as a bookmarker – out of page five of Sartre’s “Nausea”. The finger had been there for a very long time, after all. I expelled quiet, flatulent bursts from between my lips, imparting crooked edges of smoke, testing some abstract notion that the smoke might very well fill the crack in the ceiling.

And I waited. For anything to happen. If you lie down in a room long enough, things happen. Things really happen. But, you know, sometimes you have to wait pretty long and it gets a bit ridiculous. You know you’re being ridiculous, and you know you’re smarter than this real life scenario is portraying you, but something is sitting on you. Something is sitting on your body. Something is sitting on your emotions. Something is sitting on your thoughts. Of course you think it’s just me.

Hello! Is anything happening? I listened –no, that is, I heard. I heard my neighbor Willie on the other side of the wall. I didn’t know it was him and I didn’t try to figure out what that sound was. So it took me ten, twelve, maybe fifteen, maybe more, minutes to acknowledge that the man was snoring his head off. Willie snoring so loudly that I thought about his snoring above all else. For minutes the snoring obsessively consumed my thoughts. In fact, I meditated on it with such a profound level of concentration that, if I had room to think about this too, I might have been a little disturbed that this subject matter took complete precedence over all those other more universally important things that I so wished to be motivated towards. Things that would make me rich, or more educated, or happy, or well-liked….

Willie. Yuck! Willie, you old pervert. Only a sheet of thick spackling compound keeps you from accidentally touching me in my bed.

I exhaled a smooth stream of smoke and thought about calling my friends. But I remembered that I probably hadn’t any more friends because I had thought about calling them for a very long time now.

So I did something, damn it! I lifted myself up from my bed….no, NOT just a bed….a planet. Just my size. The kind The Little Prince might find himself on, with the gravitational pull of a black hole! The point is that I did something.

My God! I was filled with ambition. I’ve had ambition before. This is how it felt then, too. I crossed the wide plywood porch and escaped through the screen door – after fiddling convulsively with the forty year old salt air rusted latch – leaped quickly onto the second flagstone of the path embedded into the lawn from the beginning of the lawn to the end of the lawn to the road – no sidewalk – before any though could intervene to keep me inside.

I took a deep breath.

Then I set off to think about starting to consider the arrangements of maybe coming up with an idea that might lead to a possible goal, or something. I felt directed toward something, and Goddammit, I was going to accomplish it.

I sprinted – well, walked swiftly – across the street and made it somewhere. I wasn’t in my house anymore! I had made it to a café – an actual café with people. I bought a cup of coffee. I began to drink. I lit a cigarette and allowed the smoke to drift off without my normally relentless scrutiny. I gave that smoke the opportunity to autonomously fill up cracks in the wall that I found so fascinating – or pretended to because they were there to look at.

So much to do. So much! The coffee metamorphosis was working – transforming my groggy ambition into flesh that desired to move, into a brain that wanted to think. So I sat there and thought about how I would move my body.

I curled my finger around the handle of the cup – my fourth cup – and took one more sip – that one-too-many sips that catapulted me out of my physical presence in what was, to me anyways, an uncomfortable feeling of unreality inside cafes, back into the safe and murky quagmires of my brain, where I stayed for…well, for a long time probably.

I couldn’t leave the chair. I realized that I could not leave that chair – maybe ever – and accepted it. My eyelids barely resisted their own weight, and my face began a slow descent into itself pulled by a gravity that I knew had the color of gray.

So I lifted my feet up a few inches and pressing my fingers against the table, made the chair lean on its hind legs. I balanced very well like this for some time, feeling somehow tremendously daring at this precarious position I had assumed – and felt pity for those around me who had to look so hard for this quality of satisfaction.

The chair keeled over. There – with its four legs sticking up as if overcome by rigor mortis.

I lay there, unhurt, and disturbingly comfortable.

I put my right arm under my head for a pillow and closed my eyes.

And there I believed that I alone lived on the cutting edge of total lethargy.

******************************

That was when Colonel Opal Mayo entered my life – although, as far as she was concerned, I had entered it a long time ago – and sometimes I had never entered it. You’ll understand shortly. She had been sitting next to me in the café. She reached down, plucked me up with an extraordinary strength for an elderly woman, reprimanded me with great familiarity for lying on the floor, and led me to her home, where I promptly fell asleep.

Even the most perceptive of people would not necessarily pick up on the walking paradox that was Colonel Opal Mayo. Although slightly glassy-eyed, the roundness and considerably large bulging quality of her eyes emanated a terrifying sense of clairvoyance, making one look quickly away.

She moved about the room with the robust posturing befitting her now retired distinguished position from the United States Army. Then the commands issued forth to her guests – any guest – demands to coalesce as a cleaning crew. And with her clear, booming voice one was inclined to jump to attention and get moving! Therefore, it seemed certain that one had simply heard incorrectly when she said – or seemed to be saying – that the painting (of two conch shells on a window sill, looking out on a beach) be turned facing the wall so that the two people making love on the window sill would not fall into the cleaning bucket and drown.

**************************

Colonel Opal Mayo looked over at the pile of bruises and pimply skin that constituted, what should have been, a radiating sleeping beauty, but was just me instead. “What are you doing here?” she asked when she caught me with one eye open. “Oh, yes. How awful. I found you collapsed. How awful. Awful! Just like in the movies, though. Poor little girl. Although I suppose you aren’t really a little girl. Any woman under sixty is a girl to an old pussy like me.”

She leaned forward in her chair – an early twentieth century barber’s chair that had belonged to her now deceased, beloved husband, Colonel Arthur Mayo. It had belonged to his father before him. Arthur was a genius with a razor. The troops endearingly referred to him as “The Barger” because of his amazing collection of personal hygiene equipment which he carried upon his person at all times. “All geniuses slip occasionally, though,” she told me – and that must have happened to Arthur the day she found him in the bathtub lounging dead in the still tepid, bloodied water. Although why he was shaving his arms she would never understand – or refused to, really. Colonel Mayo examined me from across the room as her fingers worked autonomously on a rug hooking project – it was to be a new bathroom mat; mallard ducks flying across the marshes….”to go where?” she suddenly asked out loud. It disturbed her not to know. Colonel Opal Mayo liked to know everything that was going on in her precious East Orleans community.

“How old are you young lady? I just can’t tell anymore. Fifteen? Twenty-five? Surely you can be no older than that. What are you doing here? Oh yes, you’re visiting. It’s been too long since I’ve seen my lovely niece Letty. And you’re all grown up now, aren’t you Letty?”

She held up the rug and looked at it thoughtfully. “How dull.” She grimaced at the picture. “Who really cares where those mallards are going….besides me, of course. This will always disconcert me. Perhaps I should give it to someone as a gift. Yes, that’s it. But whomever I give it to will think it’s just as dull as I do; then naturally, they’ll think that I’m dull. They’ll say, ‘Oh, that Opal Mayo. She means well, but she’s such a doddering, dull old woman.’ And then the well-meaning gift shall be most ceremoniously placed in the back of the hall closet, to be one day rediscovered, put in a box, gift wrapped, and most likely, given back to me as a Christmas gift. To think they would give me back my own gift! How could they do such an insensitive thing? Well then, I’ll just keep the darn rug.”

I sneezed roughly, followed by an irritable “Ouch!” I put my hand to my colorfully bloated cheek to hold it still for the other sneeze that was on its way and waited immobilized with painful apprehension. The sneeze forced its wayout of me and again came a long, whiney “Oooowwwww!”

“Well, so you’re actually alive. For the life of me I cannot understand why young people today sleep so darn much.” Colonel Mayo leapt from her barber’s chair with the creaky agility of an old cat. I looked at her curiously, my ugly small eyes squinting trying to discern this situation. They weren’t really such small squinty eyes but huge beautiful eyes that seemed to escape everyone’s notice.

“Let me get you some tea, soldier. But you won’t be able to sip it. I shall get you a straw. But who ever heard of drinking Earl Grey through a straw? Perhaps not tea then. What do you like? A good strong belt?”

I stared at the old lady for a moment, and then realizing I had just been addressed, opened my mouth to answer. But it wouldn’t open, and I felt a line of warm sticky drool flowing ticklishly down my chin, which had somehow gotten mashed upon hitting the floor in the café. I wiped it away, lowering my face with embarrassment.

“It’s all right, soldier, Your mouth is a little cumbersome for speaking. That’s what getting into brawls will do to you. Don’t you worry. I’ll make you a concoction of my own that is meant only to be drunk from a straw. It’ll help you bite the bullet.” The old colonel wandered out of her parlor – that’s what she called it – into the kitchen.

I blinked several times trying to focus in on light. I’m going blind! I involuntarily drew in a tight, painful breath. The ‘parlor’, I realized, was a dark and murky looking room. Not dirty. No, in fact, it had the unaging look of a museum setting of an early twentieth century typical American family d4rawing room – the only thing missing was the plaque warning the public not to touch the furniture.

I pressed my fingertip hard onto the newly polished coffee table, leaving a perfect print that would last until the next dose of lemon oil.

Colonel Opal Mayo returned with a small pot of tea in one hand and a bottle lemon oil and its accompanying rag in the other. I smiled with a weary feeling of humor, and accepted the tea gratefully.

Colonel Mayo then tottered on her tiptoes over to a closed door that was not the front door and rapped sharply on it. I observed this with interest. Who was this knock directed to? As far as I could tell there was no room in this tiny cottage for anyone else to live.

“Hello! Hello in there!” Colonel Mayo stated authoritatively as if speaking to a naughty child – or some doddering hard of hearing elderly person. She knocked more quietly and lowered her voice to a sweeter, almost conspiratorial tone. “Hello! Why don’t you come talk to us dear? At least tell us your name.”

I stared intently at the door trying to imagine what kind of room could possibly fit behind it – and housing someone whom the owner of the house did not know.

The old woman stood back from the door and placed her hands indignantly on her hips. She spoke to me but kept her eyes on the door as if expecting it to burst open.

“She’s in there. But she won’t come out. Honestly, some of these elderly women are embarrassing to me. But I can’t help her if she won’t talk to me. And I’m not going to say anything, being the good Christian that I am, but she’s been taking all my soap. Heaven knows what she does with all that soap. But…if she needs it….” She lifted her hands to providence and shrugged.

“Who is she?”

“Well if I knew that then I wouldn’t have asked her what her name is. Honestly, Letty.”

“Bea.”

“Be! Be what?”

“Bea Carter.”

“Be carter? What on earth are you talking about? Oh, forgive me, Letty. It must be your poor mouth. No, don’t try to talk You can tell me about it later.”

She excused herself and went back into the kitchen, leaving me in my now accustomed state of confusion.

I got up from the couch and walked over to the door. I started to turn the knob, but stopped and knocked softly. “Hello!” I whispered. I waited only a moment, then twisted the knob and swung the door open. Inside were numerous coats, hats, scarves and umbrellas. Numerous umbrellas! And about thirty or so bars of soap. Along with a few minor idiosyncrasies, it was what any normal hallway closet carries. I returned to the sofa, and resuming my sick bed position, took a sip of the hot tea, dropped my head back and fell into a full, mollifying sleep.

I awoke on the divan the next morning. My head felt heavy and my eyelids bulky, but I could not go back to sleep. I propped my arm over the vack of the divan and pulled myself up sluggishly, nestling my chin inside the curature of my arm, which is the best place for ones chin to be. My eyes focused on the filmy greynessof the air outside – although it’s practically impossible to determine if one has focused on something filmy. The water on Crystal Lake had entirely frozen over – many times – dense concentration of ice giving off a luminosity incongruous with the ashen, dewy atmosphere. The frozen natural thread-thin streams that criss-crossed throughout, and the tracks of children’s ice skates, made the pond glitter pattern like giant wet spider webs.

Colonel Mayo entered the room with a load of dishes in her arms and, completely oblivious of my presence, walked past me to the end table at the foot of the sofa. She placed all the dishes carefully on top and began an irritable examination of the table itself. She opened the little drawer, peered insided, closed it, twisted the knob, opened it again, and, finally, needing an explanation, I spoke up.

“Colonel Mayo, what are you doing?”

“Eh! Who are you? I told them I don’t need another boarder. Oh, well! What does it look like I’m doing? I’m trying to find the damn spigot.”

“Spigot?”

“To turn on the damn water! These new modern appliances are ridiculously complicated – don’t know what’s what or where.”

“Why are you looking for a spigot on that?”

“To wash the dishes. Goodness, child, what planet did you come from? Where is that thing….I can’t find it.”

“Colonel Mayo…that…um…that’s an end table, not a sink.”

Colonel Mayo pulled herself upright and grabbing the dishes back up, marched out of the room muttering, “I know that. Does she think I don’t know that? Kids are so high and mighty…think they know everything….think we’re just old fools….” And her voice disappeared with her and the dishes into the bedroom.

She reappeared shortly, dressed for action in wool orange-yellow-red plaid pants, purple pullover and a filthy London Fog rain hat.

“Well Letty, are you going to sleep your life away? Get dressed dear, we’re going to Provincetown today.”

“We are?”

“Every Thursday I’ve been going for thirty years to visit Arthur’s sister, Vanessa. So let’s get cookin’!”

“How are we getting there?”

“We’re driving.”

“You…drive?”

“What is this? Twenty questions? Of course, I drive…why wouldn’t I drive…now move!”

I extricated myself painfully from the battered, uncomfortable couch and wandered into the bathroom. I might as well go, I thought. I had nothing better to do. I washed my face and brushed my tangled mouse brown hair till it stood up statically in the air. I grabbed the economy size bottle of hairspray from the shelf and glued my thin hair to my skull until I was pleased to note that it resembled seaweed plastered to a large rock. I didn’t have my clothes here so I would just have to wear the ones I had slept in. I usually did that anyway.

And off we went to Provincetown.

*******************************

She stopped the car at the side of a silent road, and though I did not understand why we had pulled over, I got out with the old woman and walked down the street with her. It was difficult keeping up with Colonel Mayo, marching stiffly down an empty sand swept stretch of Route 6A that would eventually lead onto Commercial Street in Provincetown, eyes straight ahead with that determined look – her usual lucid bold stare directed at some distinct destination somewhere only in her mind – because as far as I knew, we were walking down a ghost street surrounded by deserted summer cottages. I was quite positive that for the next two miles all the cottages would be locked or even boarded up for the winter.

I meandered behind, slipping occasionally on the unusual quantities of sand spilling into the streets. We’d had a few storms recently and it brought the beaches directly into the town giving it a “native quality that I liked – not that I noticed it and actively liked it for long. It soon vanished from my field of interest.

I just didn’t feel like doing this – just like I never felt like doing anything – my brain was becoming numb with fatigue. But I tried. I really tried. I took an interest in the little matchbox houses lined up one after the other after the other – not just in a general way, but in an historical way, in an architectural way, in a sociological way – for about thirty seconds. We walked past a row of about twenty identical cottages – all sea blue, and all no larger than the size of a guest bedroom. Really, I had seen these many times and had wondered about them. They were only five feet apart and so diminutive in size. Who stayed in these? Did people actually rent these in the summer? They did not seem of this era, but belonged in a time where men strutted around the beach in blue and white striped bodysuits each carrying an inflated inner tube under his arm. Each cottage had a name, cared out and dyed on a polyurethaned piece of driftwood. Names like “Wildewind”, “Sandscape”, Peggy’s Paradise” and “Drifting Dune”. Oh God! Where were we going” I was being overtaken by my lethargy. Colonel Mayo was about fifty yards ahead, and finally she slowed down, turned towards one of those matchbox cottages, and disappeared around the corner of it.

“Colonel!” I yelled, picking up the pace for a moment, but then rolling my eyes in frustration, stopped where I was and waited. She would be right back. No one would be there. I waited for a minute and she did not return. The wind was blowing icily and sending handfuls of sand into my face. I crossed my arms and put my hands under my armpits, struck the irritable stance of a snotty, impatient girl – which I was – and waited another minute. Still she did not return. Naturally I had to go find her. The doddering old fool would get lost, so I hastened towards the cottage.

I heard her voice from inside and found the door wide open, which in itself was a curious thing. But just as I was about to enter, Colonel Mayo barreled out the door almost knocking me over – and she was furious.

“What’s up, Colonel?”

“Don’t call me that! Damn Vivian! Damn Arthur! They’re together again. Have they no shame? I knew it! I just knew it.” Tears of humiliation and anger glistened in her eyes. I didn’t know what to do

I walked over to the door and peered inside. Naturally, I was not surprised to find it empty. I felt like I had to say something. For the old woman’s sake.

“Colonel Mayo, there’s nobody in there.”

Colonel Mayo stood silent with back towards me. I was afraid at that moment. Slowly she turned around and I was stunned to see a powerful rage twisting her wrinkled old face. Her bulbous eyeballs glowered with anger and her lips creased grotesquely wide across her face. And then she lit into me with a clarity of thought that I had never before witnessed in her.

“How dare you! How dare you, you twittering, pathetic, weak willed little mouse. You too! You think I’m crazy, don’t you? Do you? You’re just a young fool who knows nothing about life – knows nothing about how precious it is. You’re just like everyone else. You walk around in this daze of ennui – a pitiful bourgeois creature filled with some pseudo poetic spiritual malaise that is nothing more than willful lassitude, plain and simple. You thing that only what you see is real, and you don’t even like it. And then you and everyone else have the audacity to extol its virtues to me only at the moment when you need it to give you comfort. Well, dammit, little girly, if the only time you like your fatuous, puny little life – your pathetic, vacuous existence -- us when you’re afraid of someone else’s, then maybe it is time for you to get out. Arthur did!”

She turned and went back to the car. I stood there silent for a moment, when I glimpsed something shiny just below my feet. I stepped back, reached down and swept the sand away, revealing a battered, polyurethaned board. It read “Arthur’s Opal”. I picked it up and quickly followed the Colonel, climbed into the passenger seat, and rode with her in silence for the three hours and fifteen minutes it took to drive what should have been only twenty three miles back to Orleans.

And since she did not drop me off at my own place, but drove directly to her own house, holding the door open for me and calling me “Letty”. I went inside and stayed for an indeterminate amount of time. I believe it was several months. I don’t know what became of my apartment or the things in it. I never bothered to deal with it. I slept on her couch, wore her funky outdated clothes, ate her food (very little as I have never had a good appetite). And I waited. For anything to happen. If you wait around enough, things happen. Things really happen. But waiting here, in Colonel Mayo’s living room, I did not feel the slightest bit ridiculous.

I tenaciously pursued the depths of my lassitude, and particularly at the time when Colonel Mayo denounced my character with her perfect clarity of vision. When anyone tried to appeal to me with bald faced truths, I slipped refreshingly into an open eyed somnambulistic state until total perfect silence was achieved.

I was lifted out of my listless mire when Colonel Mayo reentered her real life. Together we watched the two conch shells be lovers while the baseball players came out of the ocean to watch. I told her to watch out for traffic when she walked down the hallway, and she always thanked me for my concern. And if her bar of soap had not disappeared by that evening, we applauded the invisible woman on the other side of the door for her willpower.

******************************

Colonel Mayo had occasional visiting neighbors, all overflowing ever so briefly with unctuous good will. One woman in particular who popped in frequently, or rather, probed in a way that never ceased to repel me was Leigh Gary. Leigh was a young woman of about thirty-five, tall and anorexic thin, who poked her pock-marked face into our lives with an irritating frequency. I say “our lives” because it became clear to me – moments before I automatically disappeared into my self-manufactured narcoleptic haven – that her probing eye had become much larger and more frequent because of my constant presence in Colonel Mayo’s home. She was extremely suspicious of me and was obviously doing what she could to save Colonel Mayo from my parasitic presence.

After observing my conversations with Colonel Mayo, whe was horrified. On one day, Colonel Mayo suddenly transfixed a furious glare at a fairly new portable television/radio set which had a screen measurement of approximately six inches in diameter.

“Dammit!”, she cried. “I hate these modern appliances. They are so darn cheap. Look at that screen! Just look at that screen I tell you!”

Leigh looked at Colonel Mayo inquiringly. “What is it, Colonel Mayo?”

“That television used to be a twenty-seven inch television, and now look at it.”

Leigh gave me a knowing glance and a sad sigh. She turned her pitying face to the aging Colonel, her eyes shining with a gratuitous beatific light, and touched her hand lightly.

“Now, Colonel Mayo,” she spoke as if addressing a naughty child. “It’s just a different television.”

Colonel Mayo barked at her, “Don’t tell me what I own. I know what I own.”

“Yeah, she does,” I said. “I’m sorry Colonel, but I accidentally shrunk it in the wash. I’m really sorry.”

Colonel Mayo looked at me sharply for a moment, and then smiled. “Oh, so that’s what happened. Well, try to be more careful, Letty.”

“Sure. Sorry.”

“And don’t call me Colonel.”

Colonel Mayo went into the kitchen. Leigh grabbed me hard by the arm. “You are egging her on. Just egging her on. I have never in my life seen anything so cruel.”

My eyelids fluttered, and her reproaches to me became a distant buzz.

**********************************

Over the next few months, the traffic got worse in the hallway, the dishes piled up on the end table, in the ball closet, and occasionally under my pillow on the sofa when I lay down to sleep. Neighbors brought food voer – steak that I hd to prevent Colonel Mayo from eating raw, and fruit juice that she tried to “make” in the coffee pot. They admonished me severely for abusing Colonel Mayo, then, having done their duty, left her after “helping” her by wagging their accusatory fingers at me.

Her normally clairvoyant gaze seemed to lose its lucidity and become swirls, at times, fading into a milky blankness. Her Colonel commands diminished, and her robust figure became thin drooping shoulders holding up a withering body. And the neighbors “helped” less, except to throw me a nasty glare whenever I left the house.

************************************

On the day of the “Pilgrims Parade”, hundreds of people from our community and neighboring towns lined Main Street starting from the town of Orleans and veering off down Memorial past the house where, now that spring had come, the grass had risen to knee level.

Off in the distance, the sound of Nauset High School band approached with its off-beat drums and squealing trumpets. I was in the bathroom when I heard the familiar old pro8d, resonant voice of Colonel Mayo out on the front porch – that great strong booming voice projecting into the air that I had, so unfortunately, not heard in quite awhile. I was elated, but could not yet join her as I had just gotten out of the shower and had only a towel wrapped around me. As I walked out to the living room I heard a loud commotion coming from outside – audible gasps and frantic voices that were meant to be whispers but forgot.

I looked out the front door, and there stood Colonel Opal Mayo with a brilliant holiday straw hat with colorful streamers draping down her entirely naked old body. The people lining the street stared at her with her beaming, beautiful smile. I felt all my torpor die inside as I watched my best friend raise her hands -- greeting Life – greeting the world she no longer understood. I dropped my towel, walked outside, and stood beside her.

Mashed Turnip and Monkey (copyright 1992)

She was falling down the stairs, and absolutely nothing flashed before her eyes.

Elizabeth Virginia Mae Hoskins lay in a wrinkled puddle of flesh and brittle bones at the bottom of the cellar stairs and pressed the button of her Lifeline necklace, crying out: “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”

The formerly young and pulchritudinous Elizabeth had become an elderly woman.

*******************************

“Where has my life gone?” she asked, tugging the paramedic’s sleeve as they sped away in the ambulance. He looked off pretending not to hear. She let her hand drop and her arm hung stiffly over the sterile stretcher. The intravenous apparatus pumped. She stared at the rainbow of veins billowing from her arm.

Doctors poked and prodded her. She was cold and naked on a metal table covered only by a piece of paper.

“What will I do now?” she asked. And they put their stethoscopes in their ears.

“When can I go home?” she asked the nurse. The nurse slid a cold bed pan underneath her and left the room.

“I’d like to walk out by myself.”, she told the intern when she was released. He picked her up and dropped her in the wheelchair. That was the rule. “Well okay”, she replied automatically. Elizabeth Virginia Mae Hoskins had always obeyed the rules. He left her at the elevator with no explanation – to check on something and be right back, she supposed (she had to suppose since she hadn’t been informed). She sat in the wheelchair for forty-five minutes.

And then it was enough.

“No!” Elizabeth yelled. She extricated her fragile body from the chair and slowly rolled her crooked up.

She walked boldly to the exit. Elizabeth Virginia Mae Hoskins was doing exactly as she wanted. And only then, everyone paid attention – and, of course, tried to stop her.

*******************************

Her husband of fifty-five years, George Irwin Hoskins, a retired accountant (“thirty-five years of loyal service”) for a chain of dry cleaners, shuffled through the lime green shag rug down the narrow hallway of their cottage to the bedroom where Elizabeth lay recovering.

He tapped her shoulder and held out a small cup with marigolds painted on it and a chip at the rim. She propped herself up with some pillows and wrinkled her nose at the rancid fumes of hot milk spewing from the cup.

“I don’t want it”, Elizabeth said.

George pushed it meekly into her hands. “It’s good for you, Betty. Drink it.”

“Oh, all right.” He waited a moment to be certain she did as she was told, and when she put her lips to the cup he turned around and shuffled back out of the room.

“Disgusting.” Betty spat out the small amount that she had sipped in George’s presence. She reached over to the drawer of her nightstand, opened it, poured the foul liquid inside, and closed it.

*****************************

When dinner time arrived – dinner was always on the table promptly at 5:30 – Betty’s diminutive five foot tall frame was hunched over right in front of the television screen watching Madonna felate a microphone.

George sat in his armchair unable to concentrate on his evening paper – looking apprehensively at his wife, anxiously awaiting her journey to the kitchen to fix, for the 20,176^th consecutive time, their evening meal. She never shirked this duty (“Betty doesn’t consider it a duty”, George always said, “She considers it a privilege.”). Betty did not even attend her sister Beatrice’s wedding because George did not like to travel – and she wouldn’t think of having him cook for himself, or hiring someone – a perfect stranger!

“Betty! Betty! Where’s my goddamn dinner?”

Betty looked at him with uncharacteristic irritation. She flipped through the Yellow Pages, picked up the telephone receiver and dialed a number.

“Hello? What! Is this Lung Chow Restaurant? What are those scrumptious things rolled up? Yes, dear. We’ll have four of those. What about that stuff that you put in those adorable little boxes with the little handle? Oh, you put everything in there? What do you like, young man? Ohhh, that sounds delicious…we’ll have that then….what was it called…Kung…POW…chicken? Delightful, dear.” She smiled with rosp optimism into the telephone, her dentured overbite locking her into the smile permanently – until she noticed it, and withdrew her teeth back behind her fleshless lips. “Yes, please deliver it to 223 Main Street, the house with the screened in porch –we’re one of the only homes that has one, you know. Thank you dear. Goodbye.”

“Betty!” George’s already shaky vocal chords cracked pubescently with panic. “What in hell are you doing? What is the matter with you? Chinese food? Delivered?”

“Oh, George, lighten up, you old fuddy duddy. It’s fun having Chinese food delivered. All the yuppies do it, you know.” She pinched her husband quickly on the cheek and went back to her station in front of the television where Mick Jagger’s cavernous mouth was coming in for a close-up.

After dinner George meticulously folded and flattened the little Chinese cardboard boxes and put them into the trash can. With a tight lip and creased brow he tied the garbage bag up, heaved it with much grunting and huffs and puffs, and took it outside, dropping the waste into his strategically placed garbage container (corner of the rectangular bottom lined up to the curb so as to form a perfect ninety degree angle).

He walked back into the living room and marched up to Betty, who was now playing a game of poker with an imaginary opponent and wearing George’s fishing hat with his Shriner’s pin, war medal and Benevolent and Protective Order of Elk’s membership emblem.

He plucked his prize possession off her muddled grey head of hair and wagged his finer admonishingly at her. “Betty, I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but this foolishness…this weird…Ever since you hurt yourself you’ve been acting like somebody else – not like my wife”.

Betty picked a card from the pile and placed it with controlled intent face-up on the coffee table. “Aha!” she yelled, and pointed her finger to the empty seat across from her. “I call your bluff”.

George’s long thin face withdrew bluntly. His normally well-balanced gray pallor blanched, highlighting facial black holes disappearing into the deep creases of his face. “I’m callin’ the doctor.”

He traced his finger down the list of emergency numbers and picked up the telephone.

“George! George!” Betty yanked the telephone from his grasp and hung it up. “George, honey. Don’t be silly. It’s nothing. I’ll be fine. Really I will. It must be some side effect from my medication. Be patient with me. Okay, honey? I’ll make a good dinner for you tomorrow, sweetheart.”

George stood immobilized still holding the receiver. “Well, I dunno…you sure are acting alien like.”

“I’ll make you cod cheeks and Eastham turnips for dinner tomorrow, sweetheart.”

George’s creases opened and lightened up automatically to the suggestion (though he meant to keep them rigid). They softened even more. “Cheeks, huh? And Eastham, not regular, turnips….mashed?” He had to ask.

“Yes, George.” Betty rumpled the sparse tuft of hair on the top of his beaming liver-spotted head. She kissed him on the cheek and went into the bedroom to sleep.

**********************

“Ta daah!” Betty waltzedsuggestively out into the living room, modeling her new outfit. “Well, Tiger!” She swung a hip toward George, who was sitting in his well-worn armchair. “Whadd’ya think?” She blew him a kiss.

George lifted his newspaper higher, blocking out his new reality now displaying itself so blatantly.

“Oh, come on George. Stop acting so old.” She leaned over his newspaper and teasingly placed her wobbling cleavage directly in front of his nose. “Isn’t this sexy and wild?”

She backed away with her hands on her hips, then turned around so that the short full green and black polka-dotted skirt twirled high in the air, revealing paisley silk underwear.

“”You’re making a fool or yourself, Elizabeth. I would suggest you remove those obscene garmets as quickly as possible.”

“Oh, George! What a good idea!” she laughed. “Oh, why bother? You don’t even know you said something funny. I like my new outfit and that’s all that matters.”

George scowled and returned his attention to the evening news. The front door slammed. “Betty! Betty!” She was gone.

**************************

“Goddamn it6 to hell, Betty! Where were you last night? I damned near called the police?”

“Sure, George. You probably just went to sleep. Well if you must know, I jitterbugged all night long at the Barley Neck Lounge. In fact, that nice young man from the Land Ho Bar – you know, the owner’s cousin or something --- Jack. He danced with me – right in front of everyone. He said I danced divinely, George! I was a knockout. I was wicked cool!”

“Wicked cool? Where are you getting this language, Betty?” He took a step toward her and pointed his index finger into her face. “Elizabeth Virginia Mae, if this nonsense does not stop…if you don’t start being my wife again, I’ll….”

“You’ll what, George?” She gently pushed his finger away from her face. “Oh, George. Why are we fighting” Why don’t you just loosen up a bit and join me? We could have so much fun together.”

“Fun! Betty, you’re just too damn old to be acting the way you are. It looks like I’m the only rational one here. Now, I’m going to remain calm. You put aside this instant youth junk and stop making a horse’s ass out of yourself.”

“And if I don’t.”

“I don’t want to even think about it Betty. But unless you prove to me that you’re not off your rocker, I’m going to have you committed.”

“Thanks George. Thank you very much for your loyalty to me.”

“I’m doing this out of loyalty, Betty.”

“Yes, George.” She walked into the kitchen with dragging, resigned steps and turned the kettle on.

********************

After breakfast Betty changed into comfortable clothes.

“Sweetheart, would you like to go for a nice walk with me to Nauset Beach? Come on, now. It’s such a brilliant day.”

George didn’t budge from his armchair, and clicked the television on with the remote control.

“George!” He remained deaf-eard, and continued clicking to different channels.

“Well, I’m going then. Alright?”

He remained silent. Her eyes drooped sadly, but she decided to go on her own anyway.

She walked over the little pedestrian bridge that crossed the deep lush green salt marshes to the dunes. She stopped in the middle of the bridge and looked into the ocean stream running below. Several large horseshoe crabs floated by with their prehistorically clunky bodies gracefully making their way through the water. She walked between the sand dunes weaving her way down to the water’s edge where she sat for quite some time staring at the multiple cross tides….criss-crossing….discordant waves….all reaching their own chosen destination.

After awhile she got up and walked down the beach. Up ahead she noticed a group of kids – young adults, really, maybe in their thirties. “I AM lonely,” Betty thought. “Why should’nt I just keep walking?” She veered towards the small group of five, following that funny smell that was wafting from them. One of the young women realized Betty was coming toward them and panicked. “Hey, Axel! Put it out. Quick! That old lady’s coming over here.”

“Mellow out Wim. What’s she going to do? We live here too. She probably won’t even know what it is.”

“Helloo,” sang Betty waving to them.

“Hi.”

“’lo.”

They all smiled to the elderly woman, but glanced at each other inquiringly.

“I was just taking a walk and you young folks looked like you were having such a nice time together, I thought I’d stop and say hello.” She stood for a moment, and graciously realizing that they may have been awkward at her indirect request, tried to make things easier for them. “May I sit down for awhile?”

Axel jumped up as if suddenly awakened and held hes hand out to her. “Sure. Of course you can. Why don’t you sit right here on this towel.”

“Oh, I don’t want to take your seat. The sand is fine. I’ve een sitting in it for over seventy years.”

t “Seventy years?” Wim asked with unjenuine, but well-meant, incredulity. “You don’t look nearly that old…..um….well, I mean…”

“I know what you meant, dear, and the compliment is accepted.” Betty smiled at the yong woman, who smiled back appreciatively for the protective response.

One of the other men picked up the small brown pipe, put it to his lips and lit it, inhaling hard.

“Orpheo!” Wim snapped at him. Her face reddened with embarrassment.

“Oh, don’t stop on my account,” Betty said. “You go right ahead. It doesn’t bother me one bit.”

The group all looked at each other. Orpheo shrugged his shoulders, and took another hit off the pipe. He passed it to Wim, who looked at Betty one more time just to make sure she wasn’t kidding. But Betty sat there and smiled serenely. The pipe went around the group. Axel took a hit and held it out to the next person in the circle, when he realized it was Betty. He was just about to pull it back when Betty’s hand was on the pipe.

“George --- that’s my husband --- he smokes a pipe once in awhile. I always wondered what it was like.”

She put the pipe to her lips and took a few tentative puffs. She looked around at the group who waited inpanicked anticipation for her to realize with outraged righteousness that it was not tobacco she had imbibed in, and then proceed to choke on the smoke and die in a coughing hysteria. But she was fine. Axel clapped with admiration and a gradual applause built up from the rest of the group. Betty radiated delight.

The pipe went around the circle a few times, when Betty suddenly blurted out, “Well, my, I feel so funny.” She started to giggle and put her hand to her face. “My skin! My skin feels so strange. Axel, dear, put your hand to my cheek….it feels so funny. Like Jello! She burst out laughing. Axel put his hand to her face and chuckled. “Everybody, try it! Touch my cheek. You’ll love it.” One by one they touched her cheek and joined each other in passionate laughter.

They gave Betty a plump green bud to take home with her, which she happily accepted and walked home admiring with a newborn thrill the ineffable wonder of the constellations.

*************************

The next evening, George caught her smoking his pipe beyind the house. He snatched the pipe from her fingers. His face flushed red with anger as he grabbed her wrist and pulled her inside, curing and raving incomprehensively.

“Oh, George…y….you….you”, she howled hysterically, hyperventilating with her effort to speak. “You look so funny when you’re angry.” And again she burst out in laughter, tears filling her eyes. The rest of the evening she watched MTV, while George sat in stony silence fliffping through already read pages of the newspaper.

**************************

“Good afternoon, Ma’am. I’m here today to inform you about the atrocities of vivisection. Would you care to hear?”

“What’s your name, young manj?”

“Keith.”

“Keith. Well, Keith, I’m Betty. And since you’re so polite, young man, you go right ahead and tell me about the atrocities of Vivian”s sex shun.”

While George was out fishing at Meetinghouse Pond, Betty invited the well-mannered, mustachioed animal rights activist into her home. She sat him down, served him a glass of milk and a plate of Oreo cookies, and listened to his passionate plea.

***************************

“And George,” she informed her animal rights ignorant husband at the dinner table that eveing, “they cut their head open while they’re alive to see what’s going on with the brain.”

“Pass the salt, Betty.” George piled a heap of mashed turnip onto his fork, topped off with one carefully balanced cod cheek.

“”And George, bunnies go blind from cosmetics testing. And that’s not even the worst. They give all kinds of animals different diseases. They give monkeys that AIDS disease.”

“They would’ve got it eventually from those homosexuals anyway,” George guffawed exposing a mouthful of over-masticated, thoroughly orally digested turnip.

Betty looked at her mate and suddenly wondered what perverse sense of loyalty had kept her with him for fifty years. She reached over and snapped up his dinner plate from beneath his face, which hovered with rapacious anticipation for his next mouthful.

“Wha’? What in hell are you doing. Give that back to me, y9ung lady.”

“Take back that disgraceful comment you made, and maybe you can have dessert.”

“What comment, Betty? I didn’t say anything.”

“Oh, George! Here. Take it.” She replaced the plate on the table where George resumed his gastronomical worship of mashed Eastham turnip and cod cheeks.

Betty sat in her rocking chair working on a rug hooking pattern to replace the bath mat. She remained tight lipped, glancing at George from the corner of her eye. He gave her a peck on the cheek and retired to bed.

When the first snore filled the air waves, Betty dressed herself in the black dress reserved for only the most popular funerals, her black hat with the wide brim and antique black lace veil given to her by her own grandmother, and left the house.

****************************

“Old MacDonald had a farm….”, sang Betty, “….ee eye ee eye..oh….” George stood under the doorway of the living room gaping wildly at the congregation of zoological invalids. A hairless and sore-splotched chimpanzee draped himself happily on George’s beloved armchair. Blind rabbits curled up in fetal positions in every nook and cranny of every cushion. Thirty-eight white mice ran frantically around, bouncing off walls and shaking wildly from heroin withdrawal.

The scarred primate leaped off the armchair and jumped into George’s arms, throwing his sinewy limbs around his neck. George screamed. “Get off of me! Get off!” He struggled with the animal, plying the long hairy fingers from the strangle hold it stubbornly kept around his neck.

The monkey jumped off and ran over to Betty with open arms. “It’s okay, sweetie.” She opened her own arms, welcoming the monkey with a warm embrace. “Isn’t he the nicest little thing, George? Poor baby.” She smiled at her husband. “And guess what? His name is George too, dear,” she said displaying the dogtag dangling from around its neck. “Isn’t that a funny coincidence?”

“That’s it Elizabeth!” George screamed, and ran to the telephone. He dialed almost convulsively, while Betty stood only a foot away calmly watching him. “Barnstable Mental Hospital, please.”

George turned to look at his insane wife. She was now pointing his very own hunting rifle an inch from his head. “Betty….now easy, Betty, dear. You don’t know what you’re doing….”

“Oh, yes I do, George. Now hang up the phone.”

A voice came in from the other end of the receiver. “Hello! Hello! Is anyone there?”

George put the receiver to his mouth. “Yes! Yes!”

Betty pulled the trigger.

George clutched his chest and with an ugly expression of abject confusion, fell to the ground.

Betty hung up the phone.

****************************

“Good morning, dear. How are we feeling today?” Betty pulled a chair up to the bed, sat down, and devotedly spooned some mashed turnip into George’s mouth.

“Mmm…mmmph…” came out of the right side of his mouth.

“Oh, George. You’re such a baby. I wasn’t going to actually SHOOT you. I only shot past you. It’s not my fault that you had so little faith in me. You scared yourself right into having that stroke. You brought it upon yourself, dear.” Betty spooned more turnip into his twisted mouth.

She sauntered out of the bedroom, down the hallway into the living room where the Beatle’s “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” blared from her new stereo.

A bottle of Cuervo Gold waited enticingly by two shot glasses on the table. Betty put on George’s fishing hat and opened a new pack of cards. She held them over the table where a healthy, hairy arm reached to receive them.

“Your deal, George.”

THE END