Mother Mary

Mother Mary 2200 words

    Janet spent the week revisiting a past she could barely remember, filling in the blanks with the knowledge gained from being wrong. Her decisions were not made without trepidation, the knowledge that choices had consequences. She debated the intricacies of right and wrong, and the repercussions of becoming paralyzed by indecision. It was a fear her father taught, that was insidious.  It crept into your being, slowly but deliberately changing your ability to distill truth from fiction. He of course had his truth, others had theirs, but she was challenged to find her own amongst the match sticks of choices spilled on the floor, deciding which one to use to start the fire that would burn down the inherent belief that you were always right, they were always wrong, and the asylum was packed with those who knew better than play the game.

    She pulled herself from the couch that Friday morning, dressed for the first time in over a week, stumbled from her apartment and onto the streets alive with the conformity she needed to remind her of choices no longer made. She took the bus the forty blocks from her world, to his. The Chestnut Cemetery, now on the edge of time, surrounded by generations of coming and going, change. She walked to the iron gate, no longer an intricate ensemble of steal arranged to illicit calm, but the twisted remnant of disillusioned empathy thrown back at those that passed by the memories of those imprisoned behind the bars.  As she looked through the locked gate keeping the dreams and wishes of those no longer capable of either, she realized it wasn’t the bars of steal or chains and locks that kept their dreams from becoming reality, but mortality.

    She slipped through space between the bars and the stone column that supported it. She walked a short distance and was met by the presence of Mary Magdalene McGuire, the same age as Janet, but appeared less tired. Janet sat next to the stone adorned with her name, date, and an obligatory array of flowers climbing the stone’s edge, framing for all eternity the essence of Mary McGuire. It was not her essence, as Mother Mary explained it to her, she had been given credit for things out of her control, but was willing to accept the adulation or condemnation, she simply didn’t care. Not caring, the tears that dissolved the tissue paper her identity had been written on. 

   “Don’t ever co-opt another’s vision, by attempting to make it your own. It will only result in disillusionment for you, and a sense of ambivalence should the one you created in your image, find out,” Mary’s words, dripping from the invisible flowers that existed in the brass vase that rested between her final exclamation mark, and Peter Fruitique, no relationship to Pierre Fruitique the derelict house painter from Newark. Peter was fifty-one years old, a forgotten poet who died eating a baloney sandwich, listening to the Mama’s and Papa’s, inhaling when he should have been exhaling. They, according to Bernice Blum the resident on the right side of Mary, were cordial, but only when she was around.

    Janet realized; she was in the cemetery she had followed her father through so many forgotten years ago. She recalled standing by the hole, wondering if that was all there would ever be. If so, what was the meaning of all the sacrifice and suffering. Did it make you a better person or a bigger fool. She knew the answer but was afraid to acknowledge it.

    She bid her farewells to her hosts and wandered up the twisting road amongst the elegant marble tributes towards the Chestnut tree, now dwarfed by the Rudolph Toy Factory, which Mary found ironic and at the same time prophetic, as her father believed in toys, but only if made of wood, and by hand. She had the snake he’d give her on her sixth birthday, a series of thread spools strung together, large to small, painted black, yellow coiled stripes designating an ephemeral magic as it was pulled across the floor. He claimed he’d made it himself and she had no doubt, he hadn’t. 

   She continued up the silent slope, waving at Bill Jensen, his name tag claiming he arrived in 1895, was lost in 1985 to the cold waters of the Mississippi in January when he’d decided he’d seen enough, heard enough, won enough, lost enough. “What was left,” he asked, as she passed, “Ascending into heaven to sit at the right hand of a stranger, I refused to know?” Janet could see his point. She excused herself, knowing if she stayed longer, he would ask her to join him. She threw him a kiss and moved on.

    She realized her time was growing short. She felt the same loss of gravity she’d felt on the floor, the day they took Bascom. She had forgotten the ring. She raised her hand to wave cordially to Holly Hopkins who hummed an old Scottish ballad as Janet looked at the ring, its dull finish not allowing it to look back at her. She continued on nodding to those awake, walking softly so as to not disturb those that were not.

    Robbie Roberson sat on the ground, his back against the stone, his hat pulled over his eyes, reciting a poem by Dylan Thomas. Cross roads, was all she heard but recognized the cadence as she was part Welch. “Sit if you must,” his words resonating a troubled sense of abandon, as he continued, “He’s in a state today. Something to do with rhubarb and ball games.” She ignored the intrusion as she fell onto the grass, she hoped sprang eternal, as she was in need of cheering up. 

    It wasn’t that she found the cemetery depressing, but the eventuality of it made her realize time did fly, but in a different formation than she had imagined. She realized she had not passed a gaggle of geese but individual ducks, remnants of lost mates, no longer caring about a future, having only a part in not paying attention to regret.

    She tapped on the stone with the ring. “Anybody home?” She waited, knowing he was slow to wake, hoping he would have lost some of the orneriness he’d exhibited in the past when climbing from the wrong side of the bed, and holding it against the magnetic poles that were constantly confusing the directives in his life. Janet lay down between Robbie, who remained blocking her view of how he came to be, when he decided to cease being, and Billibond Bogart, a riverboat captain who never learned to swim. She heard the rustle of plastic flowers as he slipped from his home and sat cross legged beside her. “Where you been?” his words serious as though he’d considered her absence. “Busy,” she replied, holding the ring up once again to determine if it were a fitting gift after all these years.

    “Meant to come sooner but forgot.” Her words bringing a smile to his cracked lips. 

    “You believe in miracles,” his question, the same question he’d always ask when anticipating a spiritual adventure. 

     “Most certainly,” their answers always the same, setting the stage for a day of unadulterated mayhem. Janet missed those times. Missed the days of returning home to the sanctity of sanity, the dull throb of conformity, non-expectations, subservience to life, as there was no opportunity for advancement. She slipped the ring from her finger and held it out to him. The interior of the ring, shined by the friction necessary to keep life interesting, its embedded scratching determined to transfer a meaning, picked up the afternoon rays and splashed them across the recorded memory of Philip Caretaker.

    “Where did you get this ring?” his question more than surprising, as he expressed no interest in the material enhancement of a person or thing for the sake of gratuitous manipulation of another’s perception. His eyes searched the engraving, the B, not a B at all, but the letter P. Someone had altered the script to impersonate the message meant for one, to be identifiable, to someone else. The e, meant to infuse the image he had of himself, everyman. The remainder, he could not recall. It had been before his years had found themselves confused by necessity, as a means of survival amongst the idiocy he found camped on every corner of his life. The y, another distortion, an abbreviation to remind him life was short on some days, too long on others, and yesterday’s promise, todays regret.

    She held out the ring to him, “Happy Birthday,” she said watching his eyes, teary, distant, as though remembering a life he believed had belonged to someone else, and he’d just remembered it had been his. She watched as he became ether in the wind and disappeared. She rolled onto her back, looking at the cumulus clouds ship shape into sculpted illusions of inspiration. She was glad she had come; sorry she had not come sooner. So little time, and yet infinity awaited those that stepped across the line, sat on the bench ignoring the sign, accepting the implications of refusing to abide by the rules meant for others. 

    Her last breath was deep and long, an apology for all previous breaths taken involuntarily, without thought.  The mind skipping the formality of purpose, taking control, without it we would forget to breathe, forget to live. She continued to watch the clouds climb over each other, turning inside out in an effort to see, where they’d been. “Look, Abraham Lincoln,” she pointing to a cloud, but Robbie appeared to be lost in the antics of an ant attempting to climb the stone he leaned on, with ten times its own weight on its back. Billibond’s face appeared in the matted grass, yawned, and retraced his steps, exploring the intricacy of root systems as he returned to a memory of himself.

     She closed her eyes once again, the pain behind her eyes searching her mind for the switch to turn off the war in her head. She thought she could feel her father patting her hand, whispering it would be alright, she’d see. She thought of her mother, cramped by superstition, exploited by systems, afraid to laugh, afraid not to. She tried to raise from the ground but gave up as the swat team of resistance descended upon the person she once was, passing the one she had become without so much as a second glance. She felt herself becoming invisible, mixing with the molecules of air, finding a sun beam to ride. She felt weightless, a balloon filled with nitrous oxide, giggling uncontrollably as the string slipped from her hand and went off in search of Old Abe. 

     She felt the last heartbeat, the expectancy of the next, and then the disappointment, the loss of having missed the last train, walking to paradise barefoot and broke. The sun went black as her hand, still extended, clutching the ring, fell with the weight of a million sins, landing on the recessed slab of marble that reserved the place for someone named Alice Little. The ring jumped into the air, did a back flip, bounced once on the newly mowed grass, and rolled unapologetically down the road towards the gates that kept the secrets of all its residents, under penalty of death. 

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     Philip Caretaker slipped from the earth, ignoring Robbie Roberson who pretended to be speaking with a Gaelic accent to Billibond, who attempted to remain calm beneath the surface, despite the music coming from the new band, Anaerobic Bacteria. He looked at his daughter lying next to him, and thought about crying, but what would be the use, today, next week, a year, a thousand years, it all amounted to the same extraordinary measures human beings took to live forever, and always failed. Perhaps failure was a poor choice of words. Without failure there could be no success, for the lines of differentiation had been smudged by a God attempting to sneak into the carnival without paying.

    Caretaker, would show her around, teach her how to compensate for the those that do little, but contemplate a way to escape the tedium of monotony, and a place to escape to, or from. The reason seemed not to matter, it seemed to be on the minds of everyone no longer content with what had been promised, and the fact that they felt cheated, but it was too late to do anything about it.  He lay down beside her, placing his hand on hers, looking into her clouds, reminding himself, the first few years were the hardest. He thought he saw the face in the old limb smile, as the groundskeeper jumped from his mowing machine and attempted to save salvation, while remaining open to the prospect of reincarnation. 

  “A ring. I wonder…” as it slipped from his greasy hand and rolled down the hill onto the street below. You just never know where a ring begins and where it ends, maybe it’s enough that it does begin, and eventually does end when it meets the beginning, or does it?

   He watched the ring make its way down the incline towards the bench considered home by Bartholomew Bean. Not much went on in and around Bartholomew that he didn’t notice or comment on. Folks that knew Bartholomew, knew he meant no harm. It was rumored he’d been dropped as a baby or hit by a bus. No one knew for sure, nor did they take the time to ask. They were content that he kept an eye on the cemetery, and those commin and goin. 

 END, kind of