Nickel Wishes

Sylvie dug through her coin purse for a penny, but all she could come up with was a nickel.  Sylvie always liked the idea of tossing pennies into the fountain that was in front of her favorite bayside restaurant. The fountain was one of those creations that people would comment on as they made their way in and out of the restaurant. It was constructed of massive vertical columns of basalt buried at varying heights with low flames flickering from behind each column and water pulsing out of the tops of the columns. It made some sort of artistic statement as to how fire and water could cohabitate, Sylvie supposed.  

Sylvie always liked to pause and admire it. She would make a wish and toss a penny into the pool every time she ate at the restaurant. Sylvie was always surprised by the number of people who walked by the fountain, ignoring the promise of good luck that burbled from the holes drilled into the tops of the pillars. Sometimes, a child would pause and look up at Sylvie – probably wondering why an old lady such as herself was leaning against the railing and staring into the water. The railing was built of cold steel tubing and Sylvie always wondered why the tubing was always so cold. Even on an unseasonably warm day, the coldness was there. Sylvie wondered if it had something to do with the railing being hollow like the bones in a bird’s wing and the empty space allowed for the cold to remain unmolested. All of that cold air, just waiting in there, anticipating a gasp of heat that would disturb its molecules and warm some old lady’s perpetually cold hands.

Poor circulation, her daughter Sue was always telling her: “You have to get outdoors and start walking, Mother . . . get your heart pumping and flowing . . . do something, anything, but sit around home.” Sylvie always wanted to bring up her daily lunchtime jaunts to her daughter. Throw her smug advice back in her face and remind her that it was Luna’s on Mondays, Bart’s Sonic Burgers on Tuesdays, Skylarks on Wednesdays, Harbor House on Thursdays, and Blue Abode on Fridays.

Sylvie always wanted to rattle off her weekly itinerary at Sue, but she knew that Sue wouldn’t even be listening. Sue said words, but she never listened. Sylvie often caught Sue examining the rings on her fingers and admiring her collection of Black Hills Gold that she was so quick to brag about. She had a ring on every finger, even her thumbs. As if jewelry could ever make a person more interesting, Sylvie would think.

Sylvie would watch Sue rubbing and picking at any fibers that were caught in the curlicues of the grape leaves in the designs. It was as if Sue was just putting in her time when she came to visit Sylvie. It would have been maddening if it hadn’t been so sad. Sue just didn’t seem to get it. She thought that owning a themed collection of jewelry was important – a feat to be lauded and complimented by the random barista or coworker. Sylvie couldn’t believe that she had raised such a daughter as Sue. The apple had been hurled, not dropped, from the tree when Sylvie gave birth to her older daughter.

Penny had been different from her older sister. Penny had marched to her own drummer since she was a little girl. Penny had always known when to talk and how to listen. She was that rare sort of person who “saw” people. People felt important when they spent time with Penny. Sylvie missed Penny more than she let Sue know. She didn’t want to give Sue another reason to dislike her even more. It wasn’t worth it, this “buying back of self” to establish a higher rate of currency with people who didn't understand. If Sylvie had learned anything in her 78 years, she knew when people were shining her on and wanting her to be invisible. After all, what would an old lady have to offer the world? This is one of the main things that Sylvie hated about growing old: invisibility.

But I have a voice! Sylvie always wanted to shout at Sue, which is why she was so fond of her established weekly lunch routine. All of the waitstaff knew Sylvie. They escorted her to her favorite small table by the front window. They would check for a wobble in the table and, if it were indeed wobbling, they would grab a paper napkin from the dispenser on the table, fold it into a thick wadded square, and wedge it under the offending leg so that Sylvie’s coffee wouldn’t spill. They knew that she didn’t like mustard on her sandwich and that too much pepper in a sauce would instigate a coughing fit. They knew that she didn’t like to have fresh, hot coffee poured into her cup when there was still some cold coffee left in it. They would grab a clean mug from another table and serve Sylvie a fresh, hot cup every time she needed a refill.  

Sylvie appreciated this about her people. Her People. That is how Sylvie thought of the kind waitstaff that smiled at her and asked her how she was and commented on the weather. Ryan from the Harbor House would even discuss baseball with Sylvie, she being a diehard Mariners fan. The best part: Sylvie felt seen. Sylvie hesitated to say that she loved Her People more than she did Sue, but it was pretty much the closest approximation to love that she had in her life.

And it was the only way she thought she was ever going to get past losing Penny. As the old saying goes: “You should never outlive a child . . . how it is the loss that you least expect.” Sylvie hated hearing this repeated by well-meaning people, but she understood why people had to coin the expression and why people felt it necessary to parrot it to the grieving. It made them feel more comfortable in a situation in which they had no experience. It was only another grieving parent who knew what it was like to give that look with eyes that said, “I get it. There are no words.”  

Sylvie stood there in front of the fountain. She felt like she had "lost time" again, something that was happening more frequently. She didn’t like the idea of tossing a whole nickel into the fountain. It felt like throwing away good money (as if a penny isn’t money) and she wondered if she could quickly rattle off five wishes as she tossed the nickel into the pool, one wish per cent. She stood there, turning the nickel over and over in her palm, and wondered if she could even come up with five wishes anymore. Sylvie decided to go for it and focus on just one. She was going to make it her “nickel wish” – one that would pay out that much more – that much closer – toward her wish.

Sylvie tried to toss the nickel as far into the fountain as she could, not wanting her wish to be discovered and mined by one of the homeless people down at the waterfront. She had seen one such nonresident harvesting coins from the fountain by the boathouse on the other side of the inlet. There he was, his dirty jeans rolled up above his scabby knees, scooping up the coins like they were precious koi and he was some sushi master. At the time, Sylvie wondered why he just didn’t leave his jeans unrolled and loose down around his ankles. They could have used a wash and the fountain action mimicked the agitator of a washing machine, after all. Come to think of it, Sylvie was surprised that she had never seen a homeless person doing their washing in any of the city’s fountains – of which there were nine in the downtown area alone. Fountains, not homeless people.

Sylvie didn’t harbor any judgment or ill will against homeless people. She had watched the documentary Sicko and she knew that most Americans were but a paycheck away from doing their laundry (while wearing it) in a city fountain. Sylvie got it. Homelessness could happen to anyone. Still, there was that “fear factor” – that aura that preceded someone who carried their house on their back in some sort of backpack situation or in a shopping cart. Sylvie never could understand why anyone would want to be burdened by a shopping cart. You would be so limited as to where you could or could not go. You cannot take a shopping cart on a city bus, for example, and you run the inordinate risk of having someone come along and mistake your mobile world for trash and wheel it to the dumpster behind a store while you duck in to buy a protein bar and a bottle of water. No, the risk of losing all your worldly possessions was too big. Best to travel light and make the best of what little you can carry. Be efficient in a minimalist sort of way. That would be Sylvie’s credo, should she ever find herself on the wrong side of her social security checks being gobbled up by the greedy pharmaceutical companies and health care system.

Sylvie’s fountain wishes always felt to be a contradiction: what she really wanted was always at war with what she should just surrender to wanting. She knew that she should wish for a better relationship with Sue, but she always wished that she could have just one more day with Penny. It didn’t seem like it was fair to Sue, this way of thinking, and Sylvie felt a kind of horror that her mind could form such thoughts, let alone attach them to a copper penny that was about to be tossed into a fountain. It was embarrassing, loathsome, unmotherly, and mean. Sue deserved Sylvie’s best. But how does a mother ask a grown daughter to, please, love her or, even better, to like her? Is it that hard to like one’s parents?

Probably yes, likely no, Sylvie thought. It was a sort of unrequited love that should not have needed any “requiting.” The sort of relationship that needed some set of rules applied (“How to Properly Love Your Aging Mother”), yet how could you ever enforce them? Was there an Unloving Daughter Police out there? A prison for the apathetic? How could you ever tell your unkind child that you felt the same reciprocating dislike? It was unconscionable, really. Sylvie felt sick and feared that she was going to vomit into the water that steadily trickled down the columns, bathing the unwashed coins at its base. She didn’t deserve Sue. She felt the need to make amends. She could do it. She knew she could. But would she?  

Sylvie felt a sharp prick of disappointment in her stomach as she watched her nickel ricochet off the tallest pillar of the fountain and then nest on top of the small hoard of pennies at the base of the columns. The nickel gleamed like a penny couldn’t, and Sylvie suspected that it would be far too tempting to not single it out from its nest of copper treasure. Surely some crow of a person would come along and steal Sylvie’s nickel wish. Sylvie would be surprised to see it still there when she returned to the restaurant the following Thursday.

Sylvie walked away from the fountain with a heart weighed down by what felt to be all the fountain pennies on the planet. She checked her watch and saw that she only had four minutes to make it to the bus stop located on the street side of the parking area. Sylvie thought about Sue’s persistent scolding about her lack of commitment to staying fit and thought how such a short distance wouldn’t have been noteworthy when she was a young mother, chasing after her two daughters. She could see them all, Sylvie laughing and chasing the two girls as they ran through the white cotton sheets hanging on the clothesline on laundry day.

Sylvie smiled at the picture in her mind and didn’t see the car that was speeding out of the underground car park. Sylvie didn’t feel anything but a moment of pain before she felt nothing.

Sylvie saw Penny reaching her hand out to her. Penny’s palm held a single nickel. Sylvie couldn’t believe it. Her nickel wish had come true. Sylvie reached out and took the coin and closed her fingers around it.