Of Eating Peas With A Knife. The reminiscing of an old lady. (standard:drama, 2251 words)
Author: Oscar A Rat	Added: Jun 22 2020	Views/Reads: 1336/877	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
She was born poor but married old wealth. Now old, she prepares for death.

I stand, looking through a window at a sleeping city. A reflection in
the glass, backlit by an ornate bedside lamp, shows me a white-haired 
woman long, long years past her prime. 

The bottom corner of a floor-to-ceiling glass door sticks as I slide it
back, admitting sounds and acrid smells of traffic twelve-stories 
below. 

I stare for long moments, trying to count lights in buildings across a
wide boulevard. Since I've forgotten my glasses, many of them merge 
together into blots of hot glowing embers. 

Turning, I walk back to an overly-stuffed chair to plop heavily into its
soft confines -- fitted to my own outline by many years of use. These 
days, due to cancer, the outline is very loose, forcing me to wiggle a 
skinny butt around to find comfort. Even that faint effort causes my 
breath to come in gasps. 

"Mrs. Evens," the doctor told me earlier today, "that pain you feel is
only the beginning. It will get much worse. All I can do is give you 
these pills. Please, don't take them unless it becomes simply 
unbearable: even then, be careful. They're very strong and might mess 
with your thinking." 

"How is that?" I asked. "After all, I'm already taking almost twenty
pills in the morning, twelve in the afternoon and a further ten at 
night." I laughed. “I think I should know all possible effects by now.” 


"They have different affects on different people," he told me. "Some no
visible effect at all. Others wake up at night with hallucinations, 
such as large spiders walking on the walls and that sort of thing." 

"I don't mind spiders, Dr. Livingston. Where I grew up, you sat next to
them in the outhouse every time you relieved yourself. I even gave some 
names and asked them to pass the paper when I was through. 'Elmer, 
honey, please bring me a sheet from that Sears catalog?' I would ask. 
That was when we were out of corncobs and had to use paper. My butt was 
raw from using those corncobs." I could see my attitude surprised him. 
"That's one thing we had plenty of on that farm. Corncobs." 

Well, so far at least, no friendly giant spiders named Elmer have called
on me. I do find myself thinking about my Alfred, though. 

Alfred was my husband of thirty years. He passed away twenty . . . yes,
twenty-one years back. He was not a very good man, in retrospect, but 
one hell of a lot better than the other choices. At least his family 
had money. A lot of money. 

Ha-ha. I remember the wedding ceremony. How embarrassed I was sitting
with my family from the poor side of the tracks. But that feeling was 
soon overshadowed by my own flubs in etiquette. When I used the wrong 
fork to eat my salad, Alfred's mother looked at me as though at 
something out of a zoo. 

Seeing her face, I made a point of eating my peas with a butter knife,
rolling them expertly down the blade and into my mouth. Eating them 
that way was a skill us farm kids used to practice to shock our 
parents. I've done it many times since, especially in fancy 
restaurants. 

Tough decisions. I must review my will. I made it out years ago but
figure I should check it once more before ... before I pass. My memory 
isn't what it used to be. For instance, I see I've left $50,000 dollars 
to my younger brother Jeffrey -- and he's been dead for the last two 
years. There's no reason in hell the strumpet he married should have 
anything. 

A niece named Marilyn finished college and moved to New York to work at
an ad agency. She might as well have the condo I'm in now. No other 
relatives live within a thousand miles of this place. Nor do they visit 
very often. The older ones that are left are in pretty much my own 
state, not able to move around much. The younger ones have better 
things to do than visit me. I understand, and don't hold it against 
them. Some people do have a life to live -- while some of us don't. 


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