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 Jo had said she was absolutely sure about people’s picking their lots in life. If you were married to a spouse abuser, well then, that’s where you wanted to be. And by extension, people who got sick . . . well that’s what they wanted, or else they wouldn’t be there in their wheelchairs or whatever.Jo had been sure of that. Yep, hadn’t she carefully planned her own life?"I picked Buzz, you know, because I knew he’d take care of me," she’d said, taking up Lou’s and her coffees and pouring them back through the Mr. Coffee "to warm it." Lou cringed, but hid it out of politeness; anyway, some people considered it intimacy to share one anothers saliva. "My Dad knew that Buzz would take care of me, too, because when Dad got drunk at the reception--and Dad always did, and Mom always put up with it--Dad told me that he knew that Buzz would always take care of me." |
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And she’d said that Buzz had taken care of her for thirty long years through drinking bouts during which she’d rage and rant and throw things, and he’d sit or stand there patiently until he couldn’t take it anymore and had walked out, leaving her, as she’d described it, " a displaced, midlife homemaker." He’d come back after a week’s fling with a sports car and a brief stay at the ocean alone. "I think it’s just amazing. . . ." Jo’d dumped a pack of cookies out on the bare table top for her and her friend Lou to munch. "Think what’s amazing?" "How people choose what they want in life. Me . . . whenever I'm with Buzz, and we see someone in a wheelchair or something like that. . . I say, ‘Look at that--isn’t it beautiful how people pick their own karma?’" "What do you mean . . . ‘pick their own karma?’" "Exactly that. Nobody’s where they are by accident; they’re there because that’s where they want to be." With that, Jo’d lit up another cigarette, dragged deep, coughed, laid it on the ashtray of butts she’d lit up and squashed out before any of them had been smoked beyond two or three drags. |
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"I’m sorry I haven’t any donuts, but Buzz brought only
two back this morning and left them on the kitchen table
for when I woke up. Those donuts from the shop on the
corner are delicious, especially the lemon-filled ones." "Don’t you get up with Buzz mornings?" "No. Buzz doesn’t eat breakfast, so I don’t have to get up--he gets himself off." Jo’d gotten up and opened the window for Lou so the cigarette smoke circled around Lou and crawled slowly out the window behind her. "He’s good about that, always has been. Now that the kids are grown, he doesn’t have to get their breakfasts either." "You don’t have open the window. It’s okay." "Buzz doesn’t smoke or drink--I intentionally picked him for that--and here I am with this nasty habit, and I know it will kill me." "You stopped before for a year when you stopped drinking and lost all that weight," Lou had tried to comfort her. |
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"Yeah . . . ." Jo’d said, standing and scrutinizing
herself in the hall mirror, turning this way and that,
smoothing her pants down over her hips from the waist with
her hands. The year before, she’d been so slimmed-down. She’d
bought a lot of nice, new clothes--but then everything got so
boring. "Last Saturday," she’d said, " Buzz took me to the park
to soak up some sun, and there was this old guy with
one of those portable oxygen tanks--it made my blood ice over.
Why don’t they just die instead of hanging around
the park when families are there?"
Jo’d lifted her arm to drag; the skin on her upper arm hung, her face, arm, chest starting to show a little crepe. She’d turned puffed, savaged-from-booze, still attractive blue eyes on her friend."It’s nice that you decided to take the exersise class with me. Buzz takes the car to work; so, this works out good for both of us.I never get any exercise, and I’ve go to do something . . . soon. We can ride together in your car."
Lou had taken out her keys and was heading for the door.
Jo followed right behind. "Yeah," Lou’d said, "nice." |
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