Just Like Suicide pt. 14

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[cont.]
One of their running jokes was that she would tell him that a good man is hard to find and he would grab her, wrap his arms around her, pulling her entire body close enough to him that they should have just melted into one, and he’d whisper, “But a hard man is good to find too.” Yes, she missed that game, missed his smell, missed the way he would exhale against her neck.
“I must be moving out of grief if I’m thinking about sex again.”
To avoid all the memories, she did what she always did: she worked harder, set her goals higher, seeking that oblivion which sometimes comes of exhaustion.
One day, covered in sweat from moving her office furniture, the second time she’d done this in a month, she remembered her momma, bless her heart, doing the exact same thing, although in that case it was with all of the living room furniture. Her momma moved the furniture so much that first year of being widowed that Odessa’s sister, tired of having to help, suggested putting wheels on all the legs. Her momma at first was offended, looked sadly around the room, and then they both burst out laughing. The furniture stayed put for a whole year after that. Odessa really missed having them in her life. Her sister had the sweetest sounding laughter, like listening to a music box.
Odessa sat on her ergonomic chair, surveying the new layout, with some satisfaction. This arrangement was better, but there are only so many ways to place furniture in such a small room. Besides, what she needed was not better feng shui but more life in her life. Her momma’s experiences really should have taught her that moving furniture was not the route to happiness.
Well, her sister used to admonish her: “Don’t belly ache. Do something about it.” She decided she really should get herself outside; she should go to the beach. She always enjoyed it, yet seldom took the time to go. Dreading the ride, she was surprised to find very little traffic for once and a parking space miraculously opened up along Ocean Boulevard itself. It felt like this treat was meant to be. She joined the earnest people walking their dogs and ceded the right of way to razor thin moms jogging with their babies in strollers. As she meandered along the manicured cliff overlooking the Pacific Coast Highway with the sand and ocean itself just beyond the road, she took the time to observe all the people roller skating and jogging. You never saw anyone walking where she lived. They all drove way over here to get their exercise. As she headed for the Santa Monica pier, a homeless man asked for a hand out but she literally had emptied all her change into the parking meter. If she couldn’t pay for coffee with her credit card, she wasn’t going to be able to hang out on the pier the way she and Dennis had, sipping coffee, flinging scraps of muffins to the sea gulls. Well, the coffee really didn’t matter: she could at least sit in the wind smelling the ocean lapping against the pylons. She didn’t really need coffee this late in the day anyway. Without thinking she wandered directly to the section of the pier where Tommy had done his performance balancing on the railing as he recited poetry and juggled four balls with everyone around him giggling and clapping. She sighed: you can’t really escape loss. Memories just follow you around, waiting for you to tire, to rest, and then they jump all over you, smother you like a tar baby in the thickness of times past. She stood there, leaning against the railing, remembering the time she, Dennis and Jack were here, Jack a teenager so embarrassed that his parents were holding hands with Dennis stealing kisses every few steps. “Grow up,” Jack scolded them and they both in unison stuck out their tongues at him.
Look outside, she ordered herself. Look at the beach volleyball game. Look at the kids making sand castles. Look at the line waiting for a ride on the Ferris wheel. Admire the colors of the cotton candy. Breathe in the smell of popcorn mixed with salt air. Relish the goosebumps on her arms as the breeze slid by. And as she was looking, she saw Barbara kissing a cute little blonde wearing next to nothing, their arms wrapped around one another, hips touching as they walked down the beach, kicking up sand with their sandals. Her heart sank as Barbara glanced up and saw her. Barbara whispered something to the cute blonde and they giggled together, looking up at her. Oh, poor Maggie. Should she tell her? Odessa suspected she already knew. Why add to her pain?


Twenty Eight
 
When Larry finally got out of bed and staggered into the kitchen for coffee, he was surprised that the house was now stuffed with flowers, mostly stinky stalks of pale blues and pinks. Everything reeked of their cheap sweet stench, but they must have been Doris’ favorite flower because she always had bouquets of them in her hospital room. He kept taking them out of the room and the next morning, more would appear. In handing them over to the nurses to adorn and stink up other rooms, he had bumped into a healer, a tall, crazy blonde with long pink nails who took him home that afternoon to ease his pain. She burned sage in the fireplace to cleanse the evil spirits and waved his clothes around in the smoke. She took the rituals very seriously and he barely managed not to laugh at her. Her antics did afford him a different insight into this ritual his daughter was enacting. Filling the homes of the newly dead with flowers was a less overt way of dispelling the spirit of death, fumigating and deodorizing its stench as much as acting a metaphor of life’s brevity. But, boy, what a smell.

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