halloween

Finish My Story Start: Miss Lucy Adams

/ wvfurandroot / 1 Comment

I felt Lucy come up behind me and hug me.  Both of her arms wrapped tight around my abdomen as she squeezed.  Warmth suffused me.  I loved Lucy’s hugs.  So much better than her rage. 

Photo by Marisa Harris on Unsplash

Lucy was usually all hugs and gentle caresses.  A curtain billowing on a still summer day.  The sofa cushions plumped when I came downstair after a night of good sleep. But she hated men.  Every man.  If I had a repair person in the house, she was all slamming doors and breaking glass.  Gusts of ice cold.

Lucy was a ghost.  She came with the house.

There wasn’t anything of Lucy to see.  She was nothing but a change in the quality of the air.  An occasional fragrance now and again.  She wears Tabu which I hate, but I wouldn’t hurt her feelings for anything in the world.  She is my ghost and I had wanted one since watching the Ghost and Mrs. Muir as a child. 

Would I have preferred a good-looking sea captain?  Maybe.  But instead, I ended up with Lucy.  I researched my deed one time.  Unusual for a house the age of mine, it had only been deeded to women ever.  The first one being Miss Lucy Adams. I assume that is who watches over me.

I don’t know anything about her other than the 1850 census lists her as a spinster school teacher.  She is the first owner of the house and presumably, she had it built.  The deed just appears as a transfer from The First Huntington Bank.

I had a roommate for a short while.  A gay gentleman who was quite lovely to me, but scornful of his lovers.  He could do a wicked impersonation of his then-current paramour.  Robbie needed to vent his spleen to love.  I often felt sorry for his conquests.  Not Lucy.  She hated Robbie and would trash his room.  Over and over.  Each day he returned home from work I could hear the sound of “Damn it, Lucy!  I’ve done nothing to you.”  After six months or so of Lucy’s bad behavior, he moved out.  He was an otherwise ideal roommate.  Gone most of the time, on time with the rent, and handy with a hammer, and taking out the trash.

I got lots of hugs when the cab came and carried him off for the last time.

Lucy was pleased.  I found the couch cushions continuously plumped with a soft indentation where Lucy had sat waiting for me to get home.

Things were idyllic at home until I met Roger. 

We worked together at the university—he was new to the English Dept.  I was in Classical Languages.  Our paths crossed now and again.  Then it was lunch together.  Then he asked me out.  I thought of Lucy before saying yes but arranged to meet him somewhere.  We went out for a while.  When I would come home with the smell of him on me, Lucy would slam doors and rage.  She broke my favorite vase the night I finally invited him over for dinner. 

Roger saw the vase rise from the center of the foyer table and land on the African sculpture hung over the fireplace.  The hearth was littered with jagged cobalt blue glass and ebony.

What the hell was that?  He exclaimed.

I replied, “That was Lucy.  My ghost.  She doesn’t like men and I don’t  know why.”

Roger looked at me with a visage I couldn’t read…

A Harrowing Tale of Reality

/ wvfurandroot / 2 Comments

Gather round, children.  I have a tale of woe and fright which you should heed.

The world for you now is all peppermint and puppies.  You are given food when hungry, a warm safe bed to sleep in, and activities to grow your sweet young minds.  You are loved unconditionally, and someone is forever taking your photo because you are cute.  You have toys and playmates, play-do and guilt–free chocolate chip cookies.  Yes, guilt-free.  You have not yet met the phenomenon of apologizing for eating that which pleases you. 

Photo by Mark Zamora on Unsplash

Instead of Mother, may I please have another you will grow up and push the cookies away saying, “My doctor says I can’t indulge.”

And doctors – instead of once a year for a physical and the occasional cold, you will have to go once a week and pay the money you earn at a job you have grown to hate for the privilege.  And it is significant money.  No pocket money for the movies or a small toy at the Walmart.  No ice-cold Orange Crush on a hot afternoon.  $65 copay and $200 for the prescription du jour that tastes likes toadstools soaked in gasoline and sprinkled with black licorice.

You have so many doctors that your sick leave at the job you have grown to hate is not sufficient and you have to use your beach days.  Yes. Precious trips to be a kid again at the beach are canceled or curtailed because of the growing collection of doctors in your monster closet.

And that’s not all. The job you have grown to hate does not pay enough to keep up with not just your doctors but your taxes.  Taxes are money you give to the government in exchange for, supposedly, services and protections you receive in return.  These services and protections never seem to serve and protect what you have or need.

The house you live in takes more of your money if you can find people to make the repairs needed.  Often you will live with a drippy faucet that keeps you awake at night because no one will take your money and fix it or you don’t have as much money as they say they need to fix it. You will spend your free time cleaning it, cutting the grass, and washing the windows except when you are at the Home Depot buying the things you need to do that with the dwindling money from the job you have growing to hate.

Instead of kindergarten with soft mats to sit on for story time, you will have to go t that job you are growing to hate.  There instead of a room with colorful carpets and crepe paper flowers on a bulletin board you will be met with a beige cubicle and a sign that says Your Mother Doesn’t Work Here, Wash Your Qwn Dishes. Instead of a smiling teacher who draws happy faces on your worksheets, you will have Brad the Boss who constantly criticizes you and complains about how many times you use the restroom.  Brad is all frowny faces and plans for improvement.

When work is finally done.  You will get in your car just like hundreds of others and fight heavy traffic to get home where you have to rush to prepare dinner and wash dishes and do a load of laundry and watch Wheel of Fortune while your kids frolic in the bathtub.

Yes.  Your kids are having fun.  You are not.  Be a kid.  As long as you can.