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: 1647/1024	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
She was born poor but married old wealth. Now old, she prepares for death.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story


I pause, listening to traffic noises far below. I often open that door,
even in the winter, to remind me of my upbringing. We get so used to 
central air-conditioning these days, forgetting the time before it was 
invented. Those times when you kept windows and doors open on all four 
sides of a home in order to have a draft coming through. Memories of 
noisy electric fans and farmhouses with many small rooms flit by my 
mind. Small rooms because they were easier and cheaper to heat with a 
wood stove than larger ones during those cold, cold winters. 

In the dead of winter, we all lived and slept in one or two rooms,
depending on guests, in order to save on fuel. Stored outside, the wood 
-- cut by hand -- would become damper as the winter progressed, 
building up soot in the pipes when we burned it. 

Every once in a while, Mama would take a broomstick, thumping the pipes
to cause a cloud of smoke inside the stove, much of it leaking out to 
make us kids cough. Then the stove would work better for awhile. 

I remember wearing heavy work shoes in the winter, sitting back on a
kitchen chair in front of a pot-bellied stove in the parlor, shoes 
against its surface while I worked on my homework. 

Soon I could feel heat through thick leather soles, knowing it was time
to take my toasted legs down. Sometimes, engrossed in the studies, I 
would wait too long, finally taking down soles burning and smoking from 
the stove, thumping them to the floor. "Ouch!" I would exclaim, hot 
leather meeting already warm feet. Those were good days -- almost as 
pleasurable as the first years with my Alfred. 

Those first few years were the best, before his anger became apparent.
When he still treated me like a lady and not a mere possession. It was 
a whirlwind of experiences as I became, at first, amazed and later used 
to the attention money can bring. People who had snubbed me before 
became my best friends. Others, who had ignored me or looked me 
askance, now waited on me hand and foot. 

Gloria, the manager of the Grand Hotel, a place that had formerly twice
rejected my application for a cook's helper job, treated me with 
deference, always asking if I needed anything. Ah, yes, beautiful 
Gloria the Bitch. I'll get to her later -- where she belongs. 

We lived at that hotel for twenty years, in a penthouse suite. More
rooms than I could count, and I didn't even have to clean them. There 
were people to do it for me. All to the good, as I was never very good 
at cleaning my bedroom at home. 

As I said, Alfred was -- at first -- the perfect husband. At least on
the surface. I was so absorbed in myself that I have no idea when he 
started to drift; maybe he had always drifted? My biggest failing is 
that I can't have children. Generic or something with my plumbing, but 
I can't have any. 

Alfred wanted one, and wouldn't hear of adopting. "I want to pass on my
line, not take potluck with some asshole's mistake," he would tell me. 
"Some idiot forgets to put on his rubbers -- and I pay? No thank you. 
If we can't have our own, the hell with it." 

I could tell he was disappointed, but since he didn't push the issue I
soon put it out of my head -- having my own projects going. I found I 
was good at handling the family finances and took investing courses at 
a local college, even tripling his fortune. 

Alfred wasn't grateful, though. Always having had money, he wasn't very
interested in the subject. It was simply something that was and had 
always been, not of any real importance. That's the way many of those 
born with it are. 

One morning while I was having breakfast with Joanne, one of the maids
-- we had become close friends by then -- she dropped a bombshell. 

"I don't know how to tell you," she whispered to me over coffee. I think
she really enjoyed it though -- I would have. "When I was cleaning the 
manager's suite the other day, I found your husband in bed with her. 
Both were sound asleep." She carefully scanned my face, obviously 
waiting for a reaction -- one she never saw. "I had to look twice to 
make sure, but it was him." 

"Alfred and Gloria? No matter, I've known about it a long time. It
doesn't bother me," I lied to Joanne, secretly simmering inside. 

Not from love, mind you. But, probably because of my poor background --
and certainly due to my financial training -- I feared a divorce. That 
and losing my lifestyle. Besides, we rarely slept together by then and 
he spent a lot of time away "on business." Come to think of it, so did 
Gloria. 

Back on the farm, we occasionally faced problems with rats and mice,
sometimes coons and tribes of wild rabbits. So we kept things around to 
trap . . . or poison them. Several times a year, we would set traps and 
spread those chemicals on meat and other foods. So I was conversant 
with many of those products. 

I began using one of them on my poor Alfred, watching him weaken as time
went by. Slowly, but surely, he faded away. The expensive doctor 
neither knew nor suspected anything. 

"I don't feel like doing much today, honey," he would tell me soon after
breakfast. "Will you call Mr. Thompson at Thompson's Gallery for me? 
And get me another appointment, please? I really want that painting." 

"Of course, dear," I'd tell him, holding his hand. "You get plenty of
rest." 

Well, he is getting plenty of rest, twenty-one years so far, hee-hee. I
smile. I hope he isn't angry anymore. Alfred was never one to hold a 
grudge very long. He should be over it by now. In any case, I'll be 
able to ask him myself, soon. 

I feel that pain coming back. It reminds me that I haven't taken my
evening pills. So I swallow the ten pills and a triple helping of the 
new pain pill. No need to husband them anymore. Not after tonight. I 
already have flighty, ha-ha-ha, plans for tonight. 

Passing a telephone, I pick it up to call downstairs. 

"Trina? Is Tommy still there? He hasn't left yet, has he?" Tommy Travis
works in the office, and usually stays late. He's a notary public, 
stamp and all. "Will you see if he has time to come up for a few 
minutes?" 

Tommy, a large efficient-looking young man, comes up and witnesses the
changes I've made in my will, initialing them and signing his name at 
the bottom. He squeezes his stamp, and all is legal. 

"If you want, I can take it down for a secretary to type up tomorrow,"
he volunteers. 

"No, that's all right, Tommy," I tell him as I escort him to the door,
feeling my heart beat faster from the effort of walking that far. "We 
can do that later. I wanted to go over it again and thought it would be 
a good idea to have it signed tonight. You never know what might 
happen." I let him out and close the door, sighing. I get up and, 
walking onto the balcony to take a long look down at a sidewalk far 
below. 

While I'm up, I put away my will, notations standing out on its
otherwise pristine pages, signed and initialed by me with Tommy as 
witness. 

Feeling silly about being hungry, I go to the refrigerator and make up a
roast beef sandwich. On a whim, I open a can of peas, even though I 
know they'll never be finished. 

Sitting at a little round table on the chilly balcony, staring out
through open space at the city, I eat the sandwich with no effort -- 
finding it filling. But, although I try, my palsied hands can no longer 
roll peas down the length of my knife. They roll off and onto the 
floor, splatting or bouncing as they hit. 

Knowing it's not strictly necessary, I get down on both knees, tears in
my eyes, and pick up each errant veggie. It was, in a real sense, my 
last brush with girlhood. Even with the help of the railing, it takes 
me minutes to get back to my feet, tired bones creaking in protest. 

It's time. No need to linger. I was never very good with physical pain,
but know it will increase. Then it will get even worse as the days, 
horrible days, advance. I walk closer, leaning over the railing to 
watch cars speed by, far below. The pills help it all seem so 
impersonal, so surreal. 

I lean out farther, taking a deep breath -- at least as deep as I'm
still capable -- a light breeze rustling my gown and feeling cool on 
old wrinkled skin. After all, it's a long ways down. But it soon 
becomes so much closer -- as I fall, anxious to see Alfred again. 

The End.


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