Dying on Schedule (Patreon)

This is one of those strange stories I've always had floating around in the brain, but I've never committed to writing them down because I had no market for them.  Now I can torture you guys with random weirdness.

I'm still working on Royal Indiscretion. Unlike most of my romances, this one isn't developing a mystery subplot and no aliens have shown up.  It may remain a traditional romance--which is strange for me.  I hope to write some on Saddled this week, and I will tell you, plotty points are trying to creep in there.  I keep getting "what ifs" that take the story out of the tack room, but we'll see.

In the meantime, how about an old feminist reconsidering her interpretation of The Odyssey? 

Stupid as it sounds, I half expected to die that weekend. Of course, I didn't, but it would have fit in some weird, post-modern, Woody Allen sort of way.

Five years. Five years of nurses in starched uniforms and stiff smiles. Five years of exercise class with a perky twit who doesn't understand that arthritic joints just do not bend certain ways even if you do breathe from the diagram. Five years of cold tile hallways that smell of hospital no matter how much damn potpourri they leave sitting in that pink bowl on the front desk. Five years.

And then he just shows up. I'm sitting staring at the basket of yarn donated by some do-gooder who didn't understand that I'm more likely to get excited by that copy of Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture that I had my eye on at the bookstore. But nope, I'm old; therefore, I get yarn. I was considering inappropriate uses for variegated string when I looked up.

He stood in a pool of sunlight that filtered in through the dirty window.

"Ethan." I couldn't really come up with anything more interesting, but then he didn't say anything at all, so that put me one up on him.

He stepped into my room, and I suddenly wished he'd given me some sort of warning. I would have put away the silver frame with his graduation picture. His eyes found it, and I knew he instantly jumped to all the wrong conclusions; he always did. The volunteers didn't cluck over me as much if they thought I had some magical support network of caring family and friends. So, I invented one for their benefit.

"Mom," he said softly. "It's nice to see you."

"I see me every morning," I shrugged. "It's not such a big deal."

He froze—that same prey caught in the gaze of a predator look he'd had on his face during his first wedding… hell, since his first date at fifteen when he'd been all gangly legs and acne. Well, at least I hadn't raised a misogynistic brute.

"I have someone I want you to meet," he said carefully, as though his words were footsteps into a minefield where he didn't have a map. He turned, and a young woman appeared at the doorway, clutching a purse in a way that made me want to lecture her on symbolism and financial security in sexual politics. I didn't.

"Hi," she offered, "I'm Darla Schneider."

I stared at girl, trying to guess her age and comparing it again my son's. "T.J. O'Dell," I offered my name in return. 

"We wanted you to know," Ethan started.

"You're getting married," I finished for him.

"No," Darla exclaimed, clearly shocked. "I mean, not that there's anything wrong with marriage," she quickly added with a glance toward Ethan. Oh honey, I felt like telling her, obviously there is something wrong with marrying Ethan because the last three times it didn't work out that well. 

"We're having a baby," Ethan explained with a huge smile. 

Okay, I probably should have managed some sort of reaction to that, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what that should be.

"You're finally going to be a grandmother," Ethan said, the smile slowly fading.

"How nice," I muttered. 

It's stupid. I'm stupid.  I just couldn't find any joy in the announcement. At the very least, I should have felt some sort of biological satisfaction even if I couldn't get excited about Ethan being responsible for a child. After all, my genes were finally being passed on. I should have felt some sympathy for this unborn child because Ethan couldn't take care of himself on a good day. The boy had starved his goldfish to death. I should have felt something that at least minimally resembled happiness or caring.

Instead, seeing Ethan for the first time in five years, I could only feel this irrational anger that he hadn't come for me but for Darla or for this unnamed fetus in Darla or for some reason other than just having the decency to show up and say, 'How ya doin'?' I was jealous of an unborn child, and that was a thought that made me think that maybe, just maybe, I'd turned into a crotchety old woman.

"We wanted you to know," Darla said hesitantly. She tucked her purse under one arm, and picked at the hem of her shirt.

"I appreciate that. You'll have to send a picture," I managed, and I really tried to sound not-bitchy. I might have failed.

The awkward silence ended only when Ethan offered me a quick peck on the cheek as he offered to pick me up some yarn if I had taken up knitting. I don't even remember how I answered that, but he and Darla disappeared out the door.

Sitting in my room, I watched the sunlight creep up the wall and I thought about the Odyssey. I taught the epic at one point, or at least I taught the subjugation and subversive power of women in the epic, but right now I wasn't thinking of Odysseus or the dysfunctional women who alternately obsessed over and undermined him.

Nope, watching the squares of sun migrate north, I thought about Argos, Odyssus' dog. After his master had been gone for so many years, Argos took one look at Odyssus on his return and died for joy after having seen him one last time. It suddenly occurred to me I'd been looking at that whole incident wrong. In his little doggy mind, Argos probably imagined a world where Odyssus had died because what else could keep his master away? He'd mourned and dealt with the loss. And then, Odysseus had to go and break the poor dog's heart by coming home. From a dog's point of view, that must have been the end of the world.

Anthropomorphic melancholy, I told myself. I sure wasn't going to die, although, like I said, it might have fit in some bizarre way. It would have made for a tidy, literary ending.  The big reconciliation followed by the inevitable but emotionally satisfying death. The clichéd circle of life with the grandchild replacing the worn-out grandmother. The symbolic ending as Argos thumps his tail on the floor and dies. 

Luckily for me, the universe isn't that tidy.