Music accompaniment: "What You'll Miss" by The Lucksmiths.
Mary arrived at work, much to the surprise of her coworkers. Granted, it had been six months, but so much had happened in that half-year. And it wasn’t as though there was anything preventing her from working, she had her health. More or less. That was about all she could claim, she would sometimes think. Today was no exception.
Her coworkers were gathered around the bubbler, as usual. It was a poor substitute for a water cooler, but they dolled it up as nicely as they could to make it as true to a gossip corner as they could. Her friend Drew had even come up with an idea to bring one of the office phones out so that they could parry the occasional nuisances of a lab representative with minimal detriment to the finest hearsay of the day. Some of her colleagues were so bold as to dub it a work-related activity because of that phone. Mary saw little humor in that any more, though she had previously heralded it in her jovial manner that had once delighted so many that she no longer felt considered themselves her friend.
The Bubbler Talk became subdued upon her entry. Maybe she had been the topic on this occasion. Or maybe they thought it inappropriate to engage in crudities and merriment in her presence. She couldn’t tell by their trained gazes, a mixture of pity, guilt, and disgust sweeping torrentially through every pair of eyes. All the same, she hated every one of them at that instance.
Mary tried to work, but in the end maybe she wasn’t quite ready for it. Everything was a reminder. Her hands would tremble at the sight of the chemical shelf, the balances looked at her coldly and menacingly. Even her chemical hood served as a bitter image. To think anybody would need to live in a box under that eerie bluish glow to do…what was it the doctors said…conjoining? No, conjugation. And to what end, what would come after that?
She kept reassuring herself that she made the right decision. It took her six months to accept that decision, albeit in a limited capacity. But she thought she missed some sort of memo, because nobody else seemed to agree. Could she be the only one who saw this situation with any clarity? Doubt constantly crept into her like a thief in the night, staved off only by a diminishing will.
It had snowed all day, and she was cold walking home. No longer equipped with her usual adipose cushion, the cold felt even more penetrating than before. She walked by a playground and shuddered. It struck her how quiet and desolate it appeared blanketed under the snow, as though the shrill laughter of the children had been forever muffled by this great, white blanket of ice. How sinister a peaceful image such as this could be when cast under the appropriate shadow.
She toyed absently with the ring on her finger, and she just as absently walked over to the nearby park bench. She had always imagined herself sitting on that bench, watching, maybe chatting with other mothers and fathers. Despite the frigidity of the elements, she sat on it anyway, imagining the water soaking through into her stretch marks, thinking maybe they could reinflate her to the size she was supposed to be. That it could maybe give her one more chance to get past five months, and that the cleansing power of the water and ice could purify the impurity she refused to bring to fruition and cleanse her of the dirtiness that she still felt covered her to her core.
She spotted a nearby tree, trembling at its familiarity and sensing that it was mocking her. He had once been her pillar, had supported her, and she he, had promised it was forever, through good times and bad times. She once loved him more than anything, and she prided herself on remembering in vivid detail both the public and the intimate rituals they had gone through during courtship and in marriage. Now all she could remember was he as a tree in the distance, looking on her aloofly and full of disappointment. During her most devastating and compromising moment, her tree looked leafless and frail and absent.
Slowly she extracted herself from her seat and, trying her best to ignore the cold of her jeans against her butt as she shuffled along, moved toward her house. She felt the weight of the world crashing down upon her at that moment, the grayness, the cold, the desolation, the absence of life. Companionship seemed completely out of reach; judgment was now her new best friend. These winter scenes, which she once found so soothing, now only called forth death and lifelessness. What had she heard her friend from Alaska call it when it would blanket the mountains? Termination dust? And here she was, surrounded by the dust of termination.
Moving toward her door, Mary fumbled for her keys and dropped them in the snow. She bent to retrieve them, sifting through the slush, and sent a sigh so despairing that it scared off a nearby hare concealed in the bushes. The movement of the bush flashed in her eyes, and she caught a passing glimpse of red. Mary’s eyes focused on a cloud of scarlet buds shaking on the bush from its occupant’s rapid departure: leafless buds, glowing with such radiance, that she almost believed that they had melted through the snow of their own accord. She half expected the snow around the bush to be melted through and through. And as she dusted off the snow from her house key and let herself in, feeling the heat of her furnace warm her cheeks, she allowed herself to smile at the thought of the flaming red leaves she would come to enjoy in only a few short months.
