Bob Barker and the Price of Cookies

If Bob Barker was dead, he apparently was making the most of it.

Bev checked the date on the magazine, guessing this bundle of BLTNs (?) had gathered dust on some post office loading dock until some chucklehead’d awoke from their civil service coma.

November 2024. She angrily brushed the white hair from her eyes as the early November winds buffeted the mailbox bank, then located the mailing label that cheapened the high-tone, heavy matte cover. Bev’s old stylist had been a pretentious little B with a stack of thick, chic, hoity Town and Countrys in the waiting area, hoping to attract a classier clientele to her shitty little dump of a shop next to the campus Domino's that smelled perpetually of pepperoni and perms.  

Upshot was, somebody was going to have to get their hot goss at the Gas N Gulp or the Great Clips like a normal peon this month. Thanks...

Beverly L. Tryon, 107 Oakline Drive, Millington IL.

Bev blinked and reexamined the other two cover boys – she was pretty sure Jimmy Buffett had sailed off into the sunset not too far back – her hairball ex would have held a three-day wake for the man if he hadn’t already cracked his parrot head three Februarys back on his way from the VFW to the Moose after the last of the vets cut him off. The Legion already had turned off the spigot, and Len’d canned the VA shrink halfway into intake, opting instead for his former wife’s counsel to “grow a set and just get over yourself.”

The third didn’t ring a bell with Bev – dimly familiar old black guy who sported at least a five-pack and who might have been handsome if, well, you know... Whoever he was, he was jamming out on some unnaturally white beach with the purportedly late Price is Right host and the patron saint of every midlife mess who’d ever dropped the mortgage on a P.T. Cruiser. By the way, apparently not J.D. Powers’ top pick for surviving a collision with anything much larger than a pop-top. She read on.

COME ON DOWN!

The Three Bs rock their Second Anniversary with ‘ritas and rhythm in Paradise! Bob Barker raises the curtain on his mega-canine rescue and personal crusade against poverty , while Jimmy Buffett and Harry Belafonte share their greatest-hit island recipes – including the greatest cheeseburger this side of Paradise…

Bev frowned as a dead maple/cottonwood cyclone teased her varicose ankles. She didn’t care for Bob’s new tarnished silver mane, and the alto sax was certainly a new one on her. Buffett wailed on his Martin guitar (part of a treasury of Parrothead trivia she’d inherited along with the deed to a charred cube of Cruiser). Belafonte she now recalled from the piece-of-shit Beetlejuice movie her daughter had dragged her to after the divorce. Only good part of the idiotic, blasphemous thing, though now she recalled that when he wasn’t slapping the bongos, Harry was a major troublemaker, one of those.

“I thought he was dead.”

Bev heard her own cervical “pop” as she whipped irritably around to find 109 craning over her shoulder. Though she’d ascertained ownership, Bev hugged the slippery magazine protectively to her chest.

“If I could just…” the maddeningly tall old busybody next-door mumbled as she attempted to reach around Bev’s compact girth. Bev leapt back, and the amazing Six-Foot Woman scooped an impossible stack of catalogues and political flyers from inside her narrow Ace Hardware box. Bev suspected she was a libtard – she kept a patch of weeds and hay between their houses with a sign about how she was a friend of the butterflies. The city wouldn’t do anything about it.

“Must be some kind of marketing campaign,” 109 chirped, extracting her own sleek BLTN from the pile. "What do you think that stands for? Probably like AARP, but I got that Saturday. Huh, addressed to me, weird. Maybe the O people sold my name to a mailing list.” Bev’s jaw tightened.

Her neighbor tapped her ET forefinger on the mailing label. “See that in the corner? 1-slash-7. Seven freebies to lure us in, then the sales pitch. Gawd, I thought Belafonte was dead. You know, my mom actually met him during one of Dr. King’s marches…”

“I’m freezing my ass off -- later,” Bev grunted, scuttling across the street, narrowly averting a Domino’s driver who apparently thought “30 Minutes Or It’s Free” was a personal code rather than a desperate marketing plea.

**

The card floated to the olive shag as she slammed the front door shut against 109 and the others. Those who’d wormed into the downtown fringe with their hippie gardens and rainbow flags and Black Antifa Lives Matter and socialist-blue yard signs as her neighbors cashed in one-by-one.

Steadying herself on the doorframe, Bev bent painfully to scrape the cream-colored card from the filth and fibers.

This subscription is a very special gift from AILEEN. We hope you’ll enjoy our thoughtfully curated articles (Bev snorted) and that, truly, BLTN enriches your understanding and perhaps even your life. With love, AILEEN.

“Christ,” Bev breathed, dropping into the threadbare Thomas recliner Len had neglected to include in the pre-nup. Aileen. There was a Cousin Eileen on Dad’s side, and two count-‘em Ellens – one a little cunt on the Millington High cheer squad who’d made her senior year a nightmare, the other a bigger cunt of a cousin on Len’s roster who she hadn’t seen since her ex’s 40^th. Bev studied the 4X6, logo-embossed card, she realized the signature was hand-written. That itself seemed hinky.

The magazine had slipped between cushion and arm, and Bev cursed as she worked it free and flipped open the stiff cover. Barker stood, arms crossed, in an improbably green field under an impossibly blue sky, surrounded by seemingly thousands of people each holding a dog. Every color and size (humans and canines), and breeds Bev had never seen in her 30-mile-radius of a life or that show with that scrawny little Mexican, Caesar Milano, whatever.

All dogs go to heaven, but Bob Barker wants all transcendants to have a Forever Home, too…See page 10

**

As Bev polished off her Marie Callender’s Meal to Share Italiano Meat Lasagna with a dessert combo of Barker and Buffett, she was certain she’d been scammed on some elaborate and epic level. The old bait-and-switch, Len would have called it, probably -- what was the phrase? – “catfishing” her for her Discovery card info or Social Security.

Bev’s old pal Wikipedia had confirmed Barker had died in August 2023, one cent short of 100, of the Alzheimer's. Unless they’d discovered some miracle cure for dementia and rigor mortis, Bev suspected somebody with a computer had deep-faked up the entire photo spread like they had at The Capital back in ’21.

Buffett had nibbled his last sponge cake about a month after Barker’d cashed in, and Belafonte’s ticker’d kicked out in April the same year. Bev read on, forsaking NCIS and then NCIS And So On, to peruse Kirstie Alley and Olivia Newton-John’s favorite John Travolta films (not what you’d think), Lt. Uhura lady’s new stage production of something called A Raisin In The Sun, and a selection of Tom Clancy’s latest poetry. The new Harper Lee and Raymond Chandler novels were coming out, and Roger Ebert reviewed Robin Williams’ upcoming comedy. Throughout were more references to transcendants, something called shepherding that appeared to be some kind of Big Brothers/Big Sisters deal for adults, and other weirdo jargon with a Scientology-type vibe.

By 10:30, Bev had bypassed the crossword for a last-page nightcap called “BLTN Bytes.” At first, she recognized none of the eight mugshots lined up along the bottom of the inside back page, and she fumbled her Walgreen’s cheaters on to see just what this shit was all about.

“I’d sacrificed my creativity for what I thought were family responsibilities, when I actually had surrendered what I loved for family expectations. Now, I sacrifice nothing.” – Tina H.

“Shepherding has opened the doors that kept me in darkness as a husband and father.” – Sergio F.

“As I help heal tortured and guilty souls, the cries of the Camps finally have begun to fade.” -- Gerhard W.

“I’d tried to treat my wartime nightmares with liquor and marriage, except I was only chasing poison with poison and a toxic relationship.” – Leonard T.

Bev paused at that last, scrutinized the accompanying thumbnail, a beaming, tanned, mustached man who appeared to have lost a good 40 pounds and a network of broken capillaries. Len seemed to be smiling up at her, not in contempt but with an infuriatingly pitying joy.

Bev frisbee-ed the magazine across the living room.

**

The second edition was in the mailbox Friday, slumming with the Miles Kimball/Harriet Carter catalogues and Subway and Arby’s coupons. Doris Day, Grace Kelly, Janet Leigh, and big-boobed Kim Novak adorned the cover this time, sharing a jumbo bucket of popcorn under a theater screen filled with a doughy, inscrutable face. WeToo!, the blood-red headline screamed. Hitchcock’s blondes talk Weinstein, micro- and macro-aggressions, and traps and tips for tomorrow’s Hollywood 2bies.

Bev’s faintly glaucomic eyes did a full loop as she wondered what in the fuck a 2bie was, and she turned from the trio of mailboxes before glancing about the dead, gray block and sneaking a peek inside 109. Beef-and-Cheese and Teriyaki Chicken, Harry & David and Land’s End catalogues, and 109’s own copy of BLTN. Bev started toward 108's box, but a chipper voice shattered the frigid November air, and she tasted copper.

“We have to quit meeting like this,” 109 murmured with a theatrically arched eyebrow, towering entirely too closely. “Oh! It’s here – I was hoping! This would have been perfect for Thursday chemo!”

The WNBA’s eldest draft pick looked more Panera’s or Whole Foods than Arby's or Subway – pale and knobby and the color of chicken skin. “Shoot, I was hoping maybe you’d want mine,” Bev lied, waving the glossy magazine.

“You don’t like it?” 109 gasped. “I find it so...affirming.”

“You know everybody in there’s dead, right? Everybody,” Bev echoed. “Sick. I mean, what’s the deal? Is this some kind of what-do-they-call-it, cyberscam?”

“We-e-lll, they don’t have a website, I checked, so not really cyber. And if this is a scam, it’s an awful expensive one, don’t you think? Did you notice there are no ads, no information about subscribing? How do they pay for this whole production? You know what I think maybe this is about? Second chances, better choices, leaving regrets behind. You know what performance art is, right? I think maybe this is like performance journalism.”

Bev remembered how good fucking Len looked considering his past stint as 240 pounds of flame-broiled road chuck. “I think you’re batshit crazy,” she snapped, struggling across the street with her slippery bundle with as much dignity as she could attempt to muster.

Back in the cost-efficient 60-degree comfort of her living room, Bev ripped through the December BLTN, scanning the names and faces of the dead – Cronkite, Winehouse, Plath, Walters, Shakur, Bogart, Cobain, Dr. King, Mr. Spock, the famous dead Kennedys building homes with Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, and a lanky and badly-styled goateed fellow who -- if Mrs. Werschnig’s fifth-grade history served her -- had taken one in the balcony four score and some-odd more ago.

This time, Bev snatched the card mid-flight.

A gift from Aileen. Just between us.

**

“Aileen.”

The tone was indefinable, the silence that followed arctic. Bev stumbled backward against the recliner’s arm. “Nat? Do you know any Aileen? Wasn’t there an aunt on your dad’s si--?”

“You never listened.” Bev’s daughter sounded a decade older, though it had been a little less than three years since they’d last exchanged a spoken word.

“What?”

“You never listened. You couldn’t hear anything through your…anger and hate. You wouldn’t hear anything. God.” Natalie’s voice broke into harsh, strained sobs.

“The hell are you babbling about?” Bev snapped even as her fingers trembled around the smartphone.

“Of course, it was us, too. We wouldn’t hear it, him. Her. Oh, fuck. We thought we were the victims, we were the ones in pain. But you — fucking you.”

Bev was now holding the phone in both hands, perched on the Thomas’ arm as if suspended over infinite space. “I’m not sitting here while you fucking cuss me out—”

“You called ME,” Nat shrieked, gasping and now laughing murderously. “After all this time, you called ME. To remind me what a poisonous, soulless, hateful old cunt you are. Well,” her daughter panted. “Well, I guess better late than never. Right? RIGHT?!”

The phone slipped from Bev’s arthritic fingers as she fell back into the cushion, veined legs kicking, folded and trapped on her back like a tortoise wearing its carapace beneath the skin. Nat’s unearthly rage and madness crackled somewhere in the deep green pile below, a blaze her mother was powerless to extinguish.

Just between us.

Before the Evil took hold of him, it was their little joke. One more thumbprint cookie, an extra slice of Kroger cake or Baker’s Square French Silk before Mom scooped him up for supper, a reminiscence or chuckle her woke daughter would never have tolerated.

We’ll keep this our little secret. Just between us.

When Aiden finally confided in Grandma, he’d turned it against her, and she wasn’t going to be extorted by a spoiled, sick 13-year-old. After it all began, after Aiden began spewing insanity, his vile inner thoughts and whinings, after the wheedling and fits and the pervert libtard shrink and the constant trips to Chicago and the financial realizations that threatened Paula’s college and the public displays and declarations and finally the family’s exile from holidays and even communications, the cookies and cake and the secrets had halted.

When Bev herself banned the “boy” from her home, spitting his adopted pronouns back in his face, he’d called blubbering from one of his freak friends’ phones to keep her from immediately ghosting him. He was alone. Dad would no longer speak to him; Mom had told him he was a selfish brat who’d made them outcasts. Aunt Nina’d told Mom (on speaker, no less) that she couldn’t have the girls exposed to such depravity, and the church in which Nat, Paula, and Aiden all had been christened had written to revoke God’s blessing on the deity’s behalf.

“Grandma, just between us, I kinda feel more and more like just killing myself.”

Bev also had received a Dear John/Luke/Matthew/Mark from the Second Millington Church of Jesus, though not from quite so far up the chain and merely punching her ticket to Tuesday night prayer and gossip and the coveted holiday potluck chairmanship. It had been months since Nat had so much as dropped her a check-in text, and the atmosphere at the Catholics’ Thursday public bingo had dropped 20 or 30 degrees since Aiden’s (parentally) unauthorized interview on the local AM morning show.

“Well,” Bev had reflected, calmly, tonelessly. “Better late than never.”

Oh, of course, she couldn’t blame herself. Like the literal drama queen Aiden’d become demanding his “true self,” he didn’t have nor, as Bev had quipped, any longer had the stones to face the humiliation he’d brought down on his family, on his grandma.

She had nothing to torture herself over – that was on the man with the swastika and Jesus tattoos who’d unloaded seven .38 slugs into the creature who was once her little guy in a Peoria LGBTQ health center lot, to the tune of Genesis 1:27.

No. It was the betrayal, Bev raged as she thrashed ineffectually to free herself from this final, posthumous revenge, the effort sending jolts of pain up her left arm. He’d broken their pact.

The little bastard. Or BITCH?

“Finally,” a young feminine voice pierced the growing fog. Bev blinked up at a figure perhaps not as lovely as Aiden’d been handsome, but somehow far stronger. “Better late than never, I guess.”   

**

“Miss?”

She’d been halfway down 107’s weedy walk when she turned beaming to the gaunt middle-aged woman gripping the porch rail next door as if she were awaiting the first life raft. The long, frail neighbor woman was smiling uncertainly back, apologetic concern in her deeply sunken eyes.

“Hello,” the girl greeted in a rather low but somehow comforting tone. Instead of holding her stance in annoyed indecision or briskly crossing the scrubby turf between them to expedite the encounter, the young woman continued down the walk and took the sidewalk to 109. On closer examination, she was what some might call homely, slender but big-boned, crisp blue eyes set perhaps a centimeter too far apart for standard, conformist “beauty.” But she moved with what Kelly’s own mother might have called “bearing” – a confidence in who and what she was, and that whatever that was just, well, right. The girl waited at the bottom of the steps, inviting, inquiring, neither expectant nor demanding.

“I didn’t mean to disrupt your day,” Kelly said. “I thought I might have heard something from, ah, Beverly’s a minute ago, and I just wanted to know everything was all right.”

“It is,” the young woman smiled brightly.

“So you’re not… I’d understood she had a, well, a grandson?”

“She did. And please don’t be sorry – I was coming to see you next. You’ve received your complementary BLTN, Mrs. Grambling?”

Kelly’s head tilted before the smile returned. “Well, yes. Though I’d have to say I’m at a bit of a loss as to what exactly it is I’m reading. Full disclosure -- I’m in no position for long-term subscriptions.”

The girl looked to the sky with a grin. “I guess, if I had to say, we’re about second chances, better choices, leaving all regrets behind. Options.”

“I’m kinda out of those,” Kelly sighed.

“Mrs. Grambling, do you have a minute to discuss options?”

“I guess I have that. And, please, Kelly.”

“Aileen.”