Wild Wordle Woman

And so, after decades of bunko and wine coolers, cruises and cosmos, country clubs and kaftans patterned with raindrops or kittens, we’d arrived together again, all tangled up and crinkly-skinned, at the age of puzzles and pickleball. We leaned harder into each other’s company, albeit remote and elastic, as all of our husbands—one another’s brothers or friends—had begun to bore us to death in their age of retired careers, brains, and dicks, like limp old rubber bands ready to shrivel, no bouncing back there. Conversations with my husband, Jim, had become as riveting as flossing after a meal. Every now and then, you get that popcorn shell out and it’s sensational—better feeling even than scratching a good itch—but as a daily habit, meh.

He golfed, therefore, I needn’t say more.

As for us gals, well, unlike our potbellied lesser halves, death and golf carts did not yet become us. We had more lives to live and faces to lift and grandbabies to meet and gold, baby, gold to spin on our horizon. We lived scattered across the country nowadays, like balls of yarn tossed and rolled all over the ground, but once a year or so we flew overhead to attend some event together. To reunite. We collected miles and upgraded our seats as we traveled back and forth, tracing the vibrating strings pinned down on the ground that bonded us, plugging in like string lights connected to power, glowing and buzzing gold overhead.

Reuniting sometimes felt so good. Champagne gatherings. In celebration, we deserved bubbles. One of our kids’ weddings or baby showers, nice little bows on brown paper packages kind of moments. Then there were the funerals or chemo treatments, visits that knotted our stomachs, the dog bites or bee stings of life. In those moments, while one of us was up or down an extra fifteen or thirty pounds, when we’re feeling sad and showing it, we drank the bubbles in defeat and quiet togetherness.

Most often when apart, the group text we’d had kept us strung together daily, like a cat’s cradle across the continent.

One strong thread, pulled in each direction.

Puzzles.

We all loved our games. Needed them, started to show one another how we’d done them. Speedy Mini-Crossword times, Spelling Bee screengrabs, always Wordle.

And then there was the pickleball.

“Keeping us healthy: the one with the paddle for your bones, the one with the pen for your brain,” Sharon shared, our little gif in human form.

Ugh, pickleball.

Kathy was the first to find the sport, told us all to give it a try, we’d love it. She said jump so Sharon and Helen and Vi had been easy converts asking how high, swapping and clicking links like double Dutch ropes for index fingers, all in the name of neon skorts and, of course, memes punning about dills and balls, about playing in the kitchen. Ever the hype-aversionist, I withheld, but was secretly pounding pavement around my neighborhood with a weighted vest, listening to fiction writers read fiction stories, and feigning nonchalance about the big C coming back for me any day now, about my brittle bones’ health. Which was not good, by the way. Osteoporosis, curse of the skinny girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes, I suppose.

I eventually came around to half-assing pickleball, and hating it. But I played to join the others, on faraway courts and little NYT Games screens, needing the connections.

Don’t feel bad for me. I kicked the crossword’s ass everyday, got my steps in, and Jim was fine. Plus I was good at puzzles, liked to them play in dark mode. And pickleball was better than golf, at least.

In Wordle, my starting word had been “BRAIN.” One fine day, I was declared a genius, and celebrated by all my best gals as if I truly was one, as if life was all greens, all the time.

Everyone tried daily to be a genius too, like I once was.

They were all pissed the day “PARER” was a word. Little knife cut some winning streaks among us.

And yet, we delighted in the dumb luck of it all.

“2/6 Shar? You’re on fire today woman!”

Blacks or whites, yellows, greens, in whatever order the day gave us.

“Tough luck x’ing out today Kath, you’ll knock ‘em dead tomorrow!”

For Christmas one year, Vi sent us all ornaments, with a mosaic that made no sense, but we appreciated the gesture nonetheless.

The word was “GROUP.”

One day in the beginning, Helen renamed our thread, transforming the way we saw ourselves. We went from being a list of my contacts:

“Sharon Parker” and

“Vi Parker” and

“Helen Doug’s New Wife” and

“Kathy ‘Bubble Butt’ Webb”

and myself

to, simply,

“The Wild Wordle Women.”

And so we had our games these days. We'd bond daily over our two now favorite things, woven together by this thread, like string games.

She’d be the first to digress, Helen, flinging life into our web. Sharing pictures of cookbooks and floral arrangements, something slapstick her grandson Paxton had done.

We all followed suit. Me last, of course.

We communicated daily, using our fingers to unlock five-letter passwords, to grip paddles, to send mosaics or long-distance support, and spin our gold, churning out five-point stars between us.

On one Tuesday, Helen chimed, sending an image.

No greens. No yellows. No blacks or whites.

Not her grandson or her garden or her kitchen.

Reds. An image of herself in the hospital.

“Hel! What happened?! Are you alright?!” We texted. I tried calling but was sent to her voicemail.

“I took a fall and broke my wrist in two places on the court. Will be in a cast for at least six weeks.” Even without the words emitting tone, we could hear her sadness. Talk about losing a streak. Six weeks would be brutal for our Helen, no pickleball. I called the florist in her town and had flowers arranged for delivery that evening. White. Our condolences, sent across the country via witch’s broom.

The word was “SQUID.”

“Thank you for the flowers,” Helen chimed, sending an image of the bouquet.

“At least we have each other and Wordle, you wild woman you!” I texted first this time.

“And Strands,” Sharon added. Oh, we enjoyed Strands too.

And so.

We kept Wordling.

Blacks, yellows, greens.

Later that week Helen sent us a photo of her cut-up cashmere sweater; mourning her cast not fitting through her sleeves, hacking away to make it make sense. We all saw the frayed sleeve and shared our condolences anew: for the sweater, the situation.

The word was “DEPTH.”

Our greatest fear was losing our streaks first, our minds second. Of putting the old in the gold we spun. Vi forgot most of the words that had previously been a solution, x'd out frequently.

As time progressed, in our thread I noticed Helen participating less and less, and even stopped Wordling, chiming, answering my calls. I tugged Sharon’s line, asking if she’d noticed anything, and I was assured things would bounce right back into place, to just give a friend some space now and then.

Cut her a little slack, Lor.

The word was “MOMMY.”

Walk it off, Lor.

The word was “GHOST.”

And so the words kept coming, and the pickleballs kept rallying, but I was unsettled by my friend’s silence, by my other friends being so, seeming so, unbothered by her absence.

I needed Helen to Wordle. Without her, I was unraveling.

Then one day, after finishing my goddamn puzzle, I typed to the group, “Alright, I’m done dinking around. We need Helen to come back. I’m worried about her. If she’s not Wordling with us what else is there? Come back Helen!” It was out of character for me to exclaim, yet I edited my text before I sent it, so I was still of sound mind in some regard.

The group was silent for a bit. By which I mean, hours.

That day I made several errors in my crossword I stared at far too long (still penning it in the paper, of course), waiting for my phone to vibrate, for Helen to chime, sending her mosaic, her apologies for being away. That crossword looked more blotted in ink than solved by the time I was done, having scratched out so much.

But Vi sent her mosaic first. 4/6.

Sharon followed. 4/6.

“Is anyone going to acknowledge Helen’s absence? Or my concern, or any of it??”

“Who is Helen?” Kathy wrote.

Then she sent her mosaic too. 4/6.

I tapped at the top of the group and went to call Helen. She wasn’t there. I went into my contacts instead. Her number was gone from my phone. All of her. Not blocked, or muted. Her husband’s number, gone. Disappeared. No strings attached.

I dropped my phone, and called out into the house.

I started to tell Jim, but the way he looked at me, I stopped.

Now here, here was the wild puzzle, some fool’s gold.

I didn’t know what happened to Helen. Her erasure wasn’t just in our text, it was everywhere. The more desperate I became for some sign of her, the more quiet everything and everyone got, starting to handle me like a stringy-haired senile old woman. To me, it felt like Helen had been a wind-chime, held up by an invisible wire. And suddenly her wire had been cut, but when her chimes fell fast and hard, not a sound was made. Only I could hear it. A silent mystery, a riddle, a puzzle I couldn’t solve, a game with no other players.

Each day beside my crossword, I'd begun to doodle more and more old memories from my childhood. Jacob's ladder, spiderwebs, the Eiffel tower...

This was insanity.

“Our Helen!” I finally pounded into Wild Wordle Women, one last time before dropping it. It had been long enough; she’d already have had her cast cut off weeks ago by now, her freed arm floating up a distant memory. I had stopped waiting, listening for her phantom chimes sending her mosaic. I had stopped thinking it had all been some odd, sad misunderstanding. But I just had to ask one more time, like the last bit of fray I insisted on pulling out. “What is happening, who removed her from everything, why won’t anyone act like they remember her?”

“We’re just trying to do our puzzles, Lor, and you are being weird about someone named Helen. We’ve been worrying about you.” They responded.

I had x’d out.

The word I was looking for wasn’t “ERASE.”

This was something else, a solution I couldn’t solve.

I was scared to keep trying to figure it out, to have my family and friends worry about me. Habits and old women have something in common: they’re both cables, and God forbid either snap, lest all hell breaks loose.

The word was “TIGHT.”

Every day, another solution.

The word was “_____.”

Her name was HELEN.

I stopped with the Pickleball. I never cared to keep score anyway, it was too complicated, tangled trios of numbers, took too much for me to pay mind. I was busy enough trying not to fall, break a bone, succumbing to some invisible tripwire. A numbers game while at it, no thank you.

It would be better this way, not playing one game at all.

When I missed or remembered Helen, I tried to cheer myself up. If I simply thought about favorite things, like crosswords or cruises or bunko in the old days, then maybe I wouldn't feel so bad. But, of course that’s not how it really works. I still felt bad.

And so I let it go. I let Helen loose I’m ashamed to say, and just kept doing my puzzles, sending the mosaics or else. Every day I open each empty Wordle grid with dread, feeling like I was about to play some squid game, like I was hearing the haunted jangling of some windchimes’ tentacles, the phantom limbs inking my soul, an itch never to be scratched.

I stayed in dark mode, trying to remember past words.

Her name was “_____.”

The word was “_____.”

And so. I Wordled, therefore, I am a wild woman.