Cybil Sets the Scene

She’d gotten good enough at it after so many years. The writing was getting tighter, her voice finally distinct, the allegory true to life. Each Friday evening, she sat at her Olympia, the typebars slapping the page as her fingertips punched the keys. Her Persian cat, Smitten, stretched her white paws upon being woken following a particularly violent smack of the parchment. The cat’s blue stare bore into Cybil with the unflappable criticism of a creature not finding much sense in any activity other than steadfast rest. The record player in the corner sat while its needle skipped for the past hour – the now muted melodies of the brass band not missed by the inattentive listener. It was only one of the variables in the equation she balanced: 𝑥 Glenn Miller; 𝑦 mug of soon-forgotten Earl Grey; 𝑧 shawl over lampshade for added mood lighting. Together amounting to: this week’s spectacle. 

She had to be careful. Already she was going off-script. The clock’s second hand leapt laps round the lined face. She tried to keep up, sliding the carriage ferociously back to its starting position upon each line’s completion. Suddenly—

“Done!” she rose abruptly. Smitten hopped down from her spot on the caved-in armchair and led the way to the unmade bed, curling up at its foot once Cybil pulled the covers over her head. 

“And…action!” came the muffled voice from under the duvet. Cybil rose and drew the curtains in one fell swoop, arching her arms above her head in a theatrical sun salutation.

“Don’t you just love that light? It can only mean a Saturday morning,” Cybil cooed. She tied her housecoat round her and headed to the kitchen, humming an awfully off-key melody. Smitten resignedly followed her owner and settled by the ceramic food bowl, expectant but apprehensive. Cybil hit all her marks: [enters stage left], [begins pouring coffee], (contemplatively) “Oh, I do hope it will be different today.”

The precise choreography of her morning routine was directed down to the last dollop of marmalade on her toast. The sound of honking cars drifting in from the jammed window was the accompaniment to Cybil’s jarring croon. When the scene was coming to its close, she placed the dishes – props, really – in the sink, and took one last wistful sip of coffee while looking at the cityscape out the window. “You can bet on it, Smitten,” Cybil declared, “I have made certain it will be different.” She swept out of the room, only to return moments later upon Smitten’s hungry yelps of protest.

She’d nearly had a meltdown at the florist’s when the red roses in the bouquet she’d ordered were decidedly more crimson (she had distinctly written scarlet!). Of course, nothing she could have said to the woman behind the counter would even remotely denote the sheer panic Cybil was experiencing. It wasn’t in the script. All she could do was graciously accept the flowers, cradling the crinkly-tissue wrapped changeling in her arms.

Now, walking briskly down the pavement she realized how ridiculous she’d been. Nothing a bit of color-correction couldn’t fix in post-production. She added a little canter to her already-rhythmic pace. She dropped a dollar into the paper cup held out by the same man she saw outside the metro station every day. “Thanks, Toots,” he raised his glass in cheers. Toots, she harrumphed internally. Not the most desirable substitute for “sweetheart,” but she’d accept the ad-lib.

Her fuse was burning dangerously low, but so far she’d managed to stem any real potential for detonation. That was until she rounded the corner onto the next avenue and was met with a dense crowd of cheering lunatics. They faced what seemed to be an oncoming parade float; no, a hideous deluge of gaudy, person-topped caravans moving right across her set! Mise-en-scène ruined, perfect take destroyed.

“ENOUGH!” Cybil cried running past the crowd and under the barricade just as the first float reached the intersection. The wagon swerved slightly left to avoid colliding head-on with Cybil who waved her bouquet in anger, screaming, “Cut it out!” Streamers and batons flew off the float as the heavily made-up women atop it were jostled. 

“Hey, lady!” shouted a cop from behind a barricade. Cybil glanced at him. An arrest for breach of the peace was definitely not in the script. She bolted to the other side of the street and ducked beneath the barricade. Staying low, she shoved through the horrified mass of onlookers who gaped at the disarray she’d left in her wake.

A block later, she’d arrived at her destination, pulling the last streamer from her hair and straightening the slightly wrinkled wrapping paper round the flowers. She studied the building before her from its dog-piss marked foundations to its pigeon-shit stained eaves; she imagined the prosaic panning of the camera. Checking in with her fuse, it fizzled precariously at its last couple of centimetres. She heaved a sigh-turned-diaphragmatic-breath and broke out into a smile. [Enter Cybil].

“No, no, no! That’s entirely what I told her! I said, ‘Lookie here, Ms. Sarsaparilla, I’m not buying any of your bottled baloney! Your generation might call it ceebeedee, in my day we called it plain-old snake!’ The gall of them, thinking they can take advantage just because the grey on my head ain’t from some swanky salon.” The woman sitting in the chair by the hospital bed shook the curls from her forehead in exasperation. Her back was turned to the doorway where Cybil stood. “Not like any tinctures would even cut it at this—”

“Cy, honey!” gushed the man half-reclined in the bed, blanketed in tangled wires and starchy sheets.

Cybil reached a congenial arm to the two outstretched in welcome.

“Now, what’s that boulder you’re a-luggin’ in here, again, Sisyphus?” asked the grey-haired Nina, Cybil’s step-mother. “The last flowers have not yet fallen from their grace!”

“Well, even the slightest wilt will not do for Paw,” Cybil answered, already unwrapping and arranging the fresh bouquet in the vase previously occupied by the barely-drooping daisies. She hated calling her father Paw, a name he only adopted ten years ago when he became a grandfather after Cybil’s sister started her family. Yet, he yielded to the nickname so enthusiastically it caught on with every member of the family and Cybil didn’t have the heart to oppose it. Though she secretly believed that – in some subliminal way – his adoption of the title was what had allowed the cancer to emerge and fester in his lungs.

“They’re lovely, honey,” he smiled. “Those roses are really something.” Cybil thought she saw a knowing gleam in his eye and beamed as she primped the final petal. Nina made a tight-lipped, smiley-eyed look at Paw who looked down at the sheets, pinching at lint that wasn’t there.

“So, Cybil, how did that job interview go?” he enquired. Full name – he was being serious.

“Oh, it didn’t work out,” Cybil gave her orchestrated shrug, palms sky-ward, lips-pursed.

“Aw, that’s a shame, Cy,” Nina stated sadly, “Did they say why?”

“It wasn’t them, entirely,” Cybil admitted, “I made mention of my rigid…schedule, and they couldn’t accommodate.”

“I see…” Nina trailed off, glancing sideways at Paw.

“Well, wasn’t meant to be,” Cybil brushed off the misfortune and any further questions that might proceed it. “So, Paw,” Cybil sat on the edge of the bed and grasped the hand that wasn’t tethered by any lines, “How have you been feeling?”

“Ah, you know. Comme ci, comme ça,” he said casually. An answer they’d been using since Cybil was little. He would put out his hand and turn the palm up then down. The more comme ça they were feeling, the speaker would exaggerate the extension of the arm and the radius of the semicircle that was drawn in midair.

They continued chatting, all of the topics Cybil had foreseen. Smitten? Fluffier than ever. Did they get around to fixing that jammed window? She’d remind the super the next day. Seeing anyone special? Didn’t they realize she was too busy for dating?

Then came Cybil’s turn to pry.

“Paw…what did Dr. Strauss say about your last screening?” Her heart skipped, muddling her delivery. Her father and Nina looked to each other.

“Cybil,” her father began. Oh no, full name. Her ears began to buzz as he continued with Nina chiming in every so often with nice-enough reassurances…lucky as it was…the last long remission…Sarah driving down from upstate. All their lines of text washed over Cybil. None of them contained within the pages laying next to her typewriter at home. She tried to catch her breath until she realized she hadn’t been breathing at all. She let out a small gasp and looked at her father, his eyes brimming with tears. “Cy,” he sniffled, trying to hold it together.

Cybil smiled weakly. “I’m going to grab a cup of coffee, anyone want anything?” She left the room. Halfway down the hall, she crumpled into a chair and sobbed.

Friday evening. She’d been trying desperately to break through some particularly bad writer’s block. She hadn’t left the house in two weeks. Every inch of her bedroom floor was covered in crumpled pages. When she’d run out of fresh ones, she tried her best to straighten out the used sheets under heavy books so that she could feed them back into the typewriter, only to tear out the regurgitated page a few minutes later. Smitten pawed her way carefully through the minefield to her armchair. She was cautious not to settle among the detritus so as not to risk being mistaken for a discarded page and cranked through the awful clacking machine. Though the apartment had become a theater of war, one positive spin had turned up for Smitten; where her food bowl had previously been filled at odd hours, it was now unceasingly overflowing.

“Shit!” Cybil pounded a fist onto the desk and launched another paper grenade over her shoulder. She shoved her face into her hands and remained like that for some time, the record in the background the only animation in the room. The phone rang.

“Hello?” Cybil croaked.

“Sweetie, it’s Nina.”

“Hi, Nina,” Cybil’s head popped up from its resting place on her hand. “Everything alright?”

“Cybil, you’re going to want to come down to the hospital.”

Cybil’s mouth dried in an instant and she felt as though Smitten had stuck a claw into her Adam’s apple.

“Cybil, honey?” Nina called down the line.

“I…I’m writing right now, Nina…” 

“Cybil, you can’t be—”

“I actually just made a breakthrough, it’s—”

“CYBIL!” Nina screamed. “You are going to want to come down here. Now.” Cybil listened as Nina’s breathing grew shaky. Nina had never cried in front of her before.

“Alright, I’m leaving,” Cybil whispered and put down the phone.

Cybil’s sister, Sarah, had met her at the entrance to lead her to the new room their father had been moved to. The lighting was awful, altering everyone’s complexions to the same pallor of death that her father’s hue somehow still managed to surpass. She’d never seen him like this. Never pictured him like this. Neither had she ever seen any member of her family in such distress, each experiencing their own version of torment. She had been holding her father’s hand without really feeling it, having not let go from the initial squeeze hello. Her eyes had been moving from each person’s mouth to the next as they spoke, but no sound came out. All she could think was that this was not how any of it was supposed to go. 

She was suddenly aware that more people had entered the room. Her family had begun to disperse slowly, like oil droplets permeating sluggishly through water. She felt someone gently grasp her shoulders.

“Honey,” Nina’s voice swam up to her ears. “You need to let go.”

Let go?

“Cybil, let go.”

[Cybil releases his hand]

She had dropped by her apartment to grab Smitten, her toothbrush, and a few other overnight things. They had all decided it was best for everyone to stay at Nina’s to look after one another. Cybil mechanically plucked each item and dropped it into her bag. She felt like she hadn’t been in control of her body since she’d answered Nina’s phone call. Like she hadn’t been able to take a proper breath since setting foot in the hospital. Now, she felt like each mouthful of air was traveling laboriously through her lungs. 

It was only when she placed Smitten in her carrier that Cybil became aware that it was the room itself that felt stuffy. She turned to the window. It was closed. The superintendent had dropped by while she was out and fixed the damned window. Cybil turned down the radiator beneath the sill. 

She went into her bedroom to switch off the light, her gaze hovering over the room and settling on her typewriter. She walked over to the desk and sat down, shimmying a mangled sheet of paper into the machine. She cranked the knob with slow twists of her wrist. She poised her fingers over the keys. 

Then—smack—T—smack—H—smack—E—

[END]