chaplin
04-04-2008, 07:41 PM
Let us start simply then proceed in complexity: She was a woman. She had two sons. She bore those two sons while a youth, and so, to her, they often felt more like nephews from an older sibling than her own children, which produced a complex tenderness for the two, most accurately labeled as exalted affection, rather than simple love.
She was especially fond of her older boy, more so than her youngest, mostly because he was more enjoyable to display and say, "This is my boy..", him being so tall and handsome. When she introduced them she would first reach up to her favorite's ample elbow, which floated just at her collar, and pull him parallel to her, attempting to allude to his height by sharply contrasting it with her own. If one of the new acquaintances mentioned the boy's exceptional verticality, she would pounce, like a released spring, on the remark and say, almost triumphantly, "Yep, 6'3, 6'3." Then, still beaming, she would let out an "Oh!", almost like a hiccup, then swivel to the younger boy and, playfully tapping him on the head, would recite his full name, including middle.
Physically, Janice (for that was her name) was partially plump about the middle and had pendulous, round folds of soft fat that hung, quite loose and seemingly unconnected, all the way down her arms. Her smile, made up of two rows of teeth so evenly spaced that they looked like a pair of freshly painted picket-fences, was the much-used, effectual externalizer of all her abundant mirth. However, it is important to say that she did not always smile out of pure joviality. Sometimes those teeth-fences would be shown only as a result of the abashed insecurity that invariably flooded her while amidst a serious moment.
That is why she limitlessly enjoyed lying in the flickering, luminous lap of a television screen; because television never ceases to laugh; even when it tries to be genuinely staid and pensive it inevitably lets a chuckle slip past once or twice, only to recommence its bellowing Ha-Has once the dark-colored veil is drawn off. Janice found this almost maniacally persistent laughter so congenial, that she rarely would let many hours pass without replenishing the abundant stock of contentment it gave her.
Well, one day (that is how so many great stories begin) she went to the doctor seeking to assuage a series of blinding headaches that had been troubling her, intermittently, for quite a while. The doctor, who always wore two pens in his pocket and had a patch of hair somewhere on his florid face that had evaded his morning razor, told her that he would "run a scan" on her, just in case, but probably just some aspirin and a week would "clear things up".
She took the aspirin, usually in fours, as she had been doing for quite a stretch now, waited the advised week, then returned.
When Janice arrived at the hospital—a large, new, box-like thing—she entered the waiting room brandishing a smile, but in a slightly subdued manner because of the thick, firm quiet that pervaded and reigned inside the sedate building. First, after carefully letting the door swing to, she selected a gaudy magazine from a shelf on the wall and lowered down onto a well-padded chair; only then, with the magazine’s slick pages in her fingers and her knees primly pulled together, did she allow herself a look around the room. Directly across from her was a heavily rouged woman going through a capacious purse on her knees; a few chairs to Janice’s right was another woman, who looked a lot like her self, with a sullen-faced son hunched over a newspaper.
Presently a door opened and everyone slid their eyes up to the doctor who entered, “Hello Janice, your turn.” Janice rose, placing the limp magazine on the chair beside her, and, as she took the doctor’s large hand in her small one, said pleasantly, “My, that was fast. I didn’t have to hardly wait at all.” The doctor grinned and nodded a “Good” then ushered her out of the room.
He led her down a glaringly-lit hallway, walking a step ahead of her, shortly stopping outside a small room with a trio of chairs along one wall. The doctor held open the door and let Janice pass through it, his feet on either side of the threshold, then, leaving the door to close itself, he entered and sat on the cushioned top of a spindly, wooden stool. Janice sat in the last chair of the three and briefly glanced over at a painted landscape hanging just above the doctor’s head.
Tossing the pale-yellow folder he had been carrying down onto the counter next to him, the doctor rested his chin on the heel of his hand and feigned to peruse its contents. Then, looking down at the floor, he let out a deep, full-chested, roughly sibilant sigh filled with obviously ominous overtones. As he swung his legs and body toward his patient, Janice brightened her eyes and smiled, but both had that air of abashed insecurity they were occasionally wont to get.
-----------------------------
On the way home that word, first spoken by the doctor, seemed to be issuing independently from her mind—tumor, tumor, tu-mor—until she thought she could feel the little golf ball searing inside her brain.
The blocks passed unnoticed; her fingers clenched the steering wheel in a whitening grasp; her mind staggered and tripped in its movements; and then, abruptly, she blinked and she was back home. Her body took a few seconds to loosen, like an angered fist, then she quietly removed herself from the car.
It was quiet inside. Both of the boys were gone, still at school. Swallowing, she hung her purse on the door handle. She paused. The disembodied sound of a passing car drifted to her then broke apart, blending seamlessly with the hushed room.
She took a few steps forward, her heels clicking on the landing, then softly patting on the even carpet of the living room. She looked around: at the clean, white walls; up at the close ceiling; and then, with everything settling and coming into focus, she turned toward the television.
She was especially fond of her older boy, more so than her youngest, mostly because he was more enjoyable to display and say, "This is my boy..", him being so tall and handsome. When she introduced them she would first reach up to her favorite's ample elbow, which floated just at her collar, and pull him parallel to her, attempting to allude to his height by sharply contrasting it with her own. If one of the new acquaintances mentioned the boy's exceptional verticality, she would pounce, like a released spring, on the remark and say, almost triumphantly, "Yep, 6'3, 6'3." Then, still beaming, she would let out an "Oh!", almost like a hiccup, then swivel to the younger boy and, playfully tapping him on the head, would recite his full name, including middle.
Physically, Janice (for that was her name) was partially plump about the middle and had pendulous, round folds of soft fat that hung, quite loose and seemingly unconnected, all the way down her arms. Her smile, made up of two rows of teeth so evenly spaced that they looked like a pair of freshly painted picket-fences, was the much-used, effectual externalizer of all her abundant mirth. However, it is important to say that she did not always smile out of pure joviality. Sometimes those teeth-fences would be shown only as a result of the abashed insecurity that invariably flooded her while amidst a serious moment.
That is why she limitlessly enjoyed lying in the flickering, luminous lap of a television screen; because television never ceases to laugh; even when it tries to be genuinely staid and pensive it inevitably lets a chuckle slip past once or twice, only to recommence its bellowing Ha-Has once the dark-colored veil is drawn off. Janice found this almost maniacally persistent laughter so congenial, that she rarely would let many hours pass without replenishing the abundant stock of contentment it gave her.
Well, one day (that is how so many great stories begin) she went to the doctor seeking to assuage a series of blinding headaches that had been troubling her, intermittently, for quite a while. The doctor, who always wore two pens in his pocket and had a patch of hair somewhere on his florid face that had evaded his morning razor, told her that he would "run a scan" on her, just in case, but probably just some aspirin and a week would "clear things up".
She took the aspirin, usually in fours, as she had been doing for quite a stretch now, waited the advised week, then returned.
When Janice arrived at the hospital—a large, new, box-like thing—she entered the waiting room brandishing a smile, but in a slightly subdued manner because of the thick, firm quiet that pervaded and reigned inside the sedate building. First, after carefully letting the door swing to, she selected a gaudy magazine from a shelf on the wall and lowered down onto a well-padded chair; only then, with the magazine’s slick pages in her fingers and her knees primly pulled together, did she allow herself a look around the room. Directly across from her was a heavily rouged woman going through a capacious purse on her knees; a few chairs to Janice’s right was another woman, who looked a lot like her self, with a sullen-faced son hunched over a newspaper.
Presently a door opened and everyone slid their eyes up to the doctor who entered, “Hello Janice, your turn.” Janice rose, placing the limp magazine on the chair beside her, and, as she took the doctor’s large hand in her small one, said pleasantly, “My, that was fast. I didn’t have to hardly wait at all.” The doctor grinned and nodded a “Good” then ushered her out of the room.
He led her down a glaringly-lit hallway, walking a step ahead of her, shortly stopping outside a small room with a trio of chairs along one wall. The doctor held open the door and let Janice pass through it, his feet on either side of the threshold, then, leaving the door to close itself, he entered and sat on the cushioned top of a spindly, wooden stool. Janice sat in the last chair of the three and briefly glanced over at a painted landscape hanging just above the doctor’s head.
Tossing the pale-yellow folder he had been carrying down onto the counter next to him, the doctor rested his chin on the heel of his hand and feigned to peruse its contents. Then, looking down at the floor, he let out a deep, full-chested, roughly sibilant sigh filled with obviously ominous overtones. As he swung his legs and body toward his patient, Janice brightened her eyes and smiled, but both had that air of abashed insecurity they were occasionally wont to get.
-----------------------------
On the way home that word, first spoken by the doctor, seemed to be issuing independently from her mind—tumor, tumor, tu-mor—until she thought she could feel the little golf ball searing inside her brain.
The blocks passed unnoticed; her fingers clenched the steering wheel in a whitening grasp; her mind staggered and tripped in its movements; and then, abruptly, she blinked and she was back home. Her body took a few seconds to loosen, like an angered fist, then she quietly removed herself from the car.
It was quiet inside. Both of the boys were gone, still at school. Swallowing, she hung her purse on the door handle. She paused. The disembodied sound of a passing car drifted to her then broke apart, blending seamlessly with the hushed room.
She took a few steps forward, her heels clicking on the landing, then softly patting on the even carpet of the living room. She looked around: at the clean, white walls; up at the close ceiling; and then, with everything settling and coming into focus, she turned toward the television.