ARR 1988 - Flipbook - Page 16
How pretty that would be in color, she thought, as she did every
morning while watching the black and white figures dancing on the set. The
television was getting old, too, and it was hard at times to make out anything
except blurred movement. "Anything as old as you is bound to be a bit
blurry," she said aloud, wondering who she meant, herself or the television.
If Scotty were alive he would get me a new one. That boy would be
thirty-five by now, she thought. He would be pampering his old mother and
coming by to see her every day. Her thoughts had become rituals and she
repeated this one, turning to glance at the corner where his photograph
perched on a shelf, flanked by a small statue of the Virgin Mary and the
Infant on one side, Saint Joseph on the other. There he was, the darlin' boy,
smiling as always and greeting her with that happy expression. She frowned
momentarily, acknowledging a well of anger she didn't much want to draw
from.
"Why' d you go and leave me alone?" she whispered shamefully. "Didn't
you know I'd need a new TV someday? What did you think, this one would
last forever?"
She whispered a Hail Mary to cover over the anger. She smiled at his
picture. It wasn't his fault that he died. Who would ever guess that a healthy,
handsome young man like him would die so suddenly? "Sorry, darlin," she
sang to his picture. "Don't worry your head about that old TV."
The tiny room was cluttered, she had to admit it. Papers and pieces of
junk mail were piled high on the scarred table. The holy statues were dusty
again. Cups, empty beer bottles. It would all have to wait. Once a week, that
was her rule for dusting and cleaning. The rest of the week, she made the
bed, got dressed and was ready for the day.
Then she remembered the plant. "Ugly thing! What am I going to do
with you?" She tried to retrace her steps from the night before, but only
blurred images came. Coming out of Angelo's, she had talked to someone in
the street, come up the back alley on her way home, and ... that was it! The
trash pile in the alley. She checked it periodically-you never knew what
you'd find-and what she'd thought to be a discarded plastic plant caught her
eye. It would look nice in her window, she'd thought, only to wake up this
morning to a dying carcass, this folding-up life with its leaves curling as if
in a prayer for their own demise. She would send it back to the trash pile.
She cranked open the smeared window and looked down into the
chasm that separated her apartment building from the big one across the
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