Give My Regards

Chapter 1

Walking beneath the summer lit foliage, she remembered the summer at her grandmother’s home. It was beneath the maple trees she sold Crab Apples in the front yard, chased the cat through the bushes, and discovered the boogieman beneath in the basement.

She was 10 then, but now she stood a grown woman in her mother’s yard.  Vivian Locke, or just Viv, was slightly short with slightly forward shoulders. Her hair wrapped like a blanket around her shoulders and neck. The truth was she never dyed her mousey brown hair except during the winter to achieve the gothic, but intelligent look. Looking at the house in the yard was a chore. To be around the house was suicide of the soul as her mother was an alcoholic co-dependent with a sour attitude but myopic life and expectations of herself.

“You know, life is hard enough as it is.” said her mother, Jean.

“I don’t care to discuss it now. So out in the open. What if someone hears you?” replied Vivian in a harsh, but pleading voice.

It was her not style to make her business everyone else’s gossip. It took all her energy to argue a wall.
         
Her mother, Jean, took every opportunity to berate Viv. Any positive achievements were put by the wayside to talk about finances or the life she didn’t but should have inherited. Jean was poor, came from poor background, but possessed the promise of achievement. Jean lived with a sense of entitlement for which she never worked for, and she discussed her life at length concerning thirty years past. Viv always said she “lived with ghosts”. Jean was a blue-collar worker and had little money, but she had fastidious taste and a sharp tongue.

“I understand,” with emphasis, “that we are out of money, but what would throwing me out help you gain?” said Viv. “It’s all I can do to find work. I work on finding work.”

“This makes me angry! I have no money to waste!”

“What exactly do you want me to do? I can’t solve your problems! You always ask for handouts, but never help anyone. It’s always when you want something! How can we improve Jean’s life?” Viv was red with anger. Debates with Jean always were always unintelligible and one-sided.

By this time, you could see the sun setting over the house and the frustration building up in their eyes. The shoulders of both women hunched forward in pounce position of a wild cat. They were butting heads.

“If you can’t help me, you should move out!”

“I get that you need help with your bills, but why do you never try to understand my position? My opinion doesn’t matter?” Viv was barking out and trying, in 26 years, to reach out and make an impression with her mother.

“It is a wonder, or more like a shock, that you still have involvement in peoples’ lives. How can anyone put up with your hostility is beyond me! But you have always been self-centered and about yourself” Vivian moved her hand over her hair.
Vivian had the final say. She jumped in her car, and from the stone porch, her mother stood watch over her. Viv backed the car down the driveway and punched the car in drive.  She wasn’t going back tonight. Too many hostile and violent thoughts boiled within. Down the road she continuously ran over in her mind the thoughts she wanted to say. The many comebacks thought afterward. That was the name of their game. Jean sought sympathy from everyone while Viv avoided conflict.

         Chapter 2          

It’s 6 a.m. I know it’s time to get up, move my slug like body from the soft cushions of my bed. It’s another workday, however, it’s not all bad. It’s not all good either. Come in, meet your quota, and go home. Repeat. Nothing that I’ve expressed about the mechanized schedule seems to hit home for the doctors.

I sit straight up in the dark, and I allow my eyes to adjust to the cold air, listening to the quiet nothingness, the red glowing light of the sleep machine with its persistent time: 6:03 a.m.

The morning news is filled with nothing new. Overnight shootings, apartment fires, wrecks – all occurring in the space of one black night. I watch as the news anchors, beautiful and pristine in their nice jobs. With their nice jobs, I wonder what they worry about.

Do they hate coming in so early for the 5’o clock news? What do they do the rest of the day? Do they love their spouses? 
“Start fighting germs for 12 hours” another commercial announcement that leaves little to the boob tube mind. The mindless, zombie rehearsal plays over in my head everyday, mind you. I rewinding of a recorder that picks up what it hears, filters it through my mind, where it will sit and fester all day. My mind, I should warn, works through random bits of information picked up and gathered. Assembled into nothing, for me, it’s a true escape from the unnecessary living of reality.

After a quick mental note of my morning routine: got my lunch, did my hair, brushed my teeth, got my coffee, keys, put on deodorant. Okay, I’m good.

With that, I stow away my Le Croix’s in my purse, hidden in my trunk, for some refreshment during the day, and I punch out mentally to punch in at work.

Can I make it to work? With the amount of gas in my tank I mean and not an intentional head-on collision.

         Chapter 3

I won’t go back. At least not this time, and I knew it. I ran, fled and made my bed; the initial shock that I couldn’t, or wouldn’t go back had hit me all day. I was jealous of others, my peers that had someone, and somewhere to go.

A home even if it were filled with others occupying the space, at least they had a roof. I sat in the car of the company parking lot, watching the other, well-dressed co-workers filing home. Maybe they went home to someone they love, or maybe not.

Perhaps, their life was a farce as well.

A sudden knock on the window revived me.

“Hey, do you have dinner plans?” a muffled voice issued from the other side of the glass. It was my co-worker, or buddy that had her desk situated next to mine. We got along amicably; however, there was always something that made me tense about her. Her and the succinct conversations she had that also included snark, and none of which she used with me. Why? Was I fully incapable of understanding?

While she humored me, she also made me dislike her.  With heavy heart and butterflies in my stomach “Ah, well, no, I haven’t exactly thought that far ahead. Why?”