*****
Walter’s Sunday
By Judith Cullen
© 2014
The alarm began its relentless beeping. It continued for several minutes and Walter
found himself wishing, not for the first time, that someone had developed a
gadget so that he could turn the damn thing off from bed. Then again, that would defeat the purpose,
wouldn’t it? His wife, Jean, had moved
the alarm clock to its home on the dresser years ago, after an unfortunate
incident in which he had hit “snooze” repeatedly for over 90 minutes.
She’d been gone for 8 years now, his Jean. He missed her terribly. She had always brought structure and order to
their lives. Walter was convinced that
he would have made a mess of things if left to himself. When she’s passed, he’d maintained her
household regimen: running the vacuum and dusting the house on Saturday
morning, laundry on Wednesdays, changing the sheets every Monday. He did his best, but he sometimes forgot
things. Walter was 87, and his life was
a dichotomy of a rigid schedule versus a firm belief that he’d earned the right
to do as he pleased, when he pleased. He
missed his Jean, and he forgot things.
The alarm was still beeping. He felt it shouting at him “Get
Up!” as he shuffled across the room and slapped his hand on the switch. “That’s enough from you,” he muttered and
continued his half-awake progress into the bathroom as another clarion was
calling louder and more insistently than an electric clock ever could be. It was the inevitable price of age and being
vertical.
After his morning watering, washing, and clacking about of
medicine bottles he returned to the bedroom with a small plastic shot glass
full of pills in one hand. He was
supposed to take one or two of them with food, but he could never remember which
ones. So he just took them all together
with his breakfast. In his other hand he
held his empty nitro bottle. He’d
forgotten to get the prescription refilled yesterday. Was it yesterday? He didn’t remember. The pharmacy had called a couple of times,
though. The helpful young voices reminding
him that he really needed to get his medicine refilled. Today he’d do it.
“What’s next?” he asked himself. According to Jean’s schedule he should make
the bed, but he waved his hand at it, dismissing it. He was hungry. So he got dressed, continuing to ignore the
bed, and made his way to the kitchen with his empty medicine bottle and his
shot glass full of pills. It was Sunday,
and that meant pancakes. Jean had made
the best pancakes: not too thick, not too flat, just enough fluff to absorb the
butter and pure maple syrup. Jean had not allowed the other stuff in the house,
the “fake” stuff. She insisted that a
tablespoon of the real thing was better than cups full of the other. His stomach growled just thinking about
it. His efforts were not quite up to her
standards, but the memory of 50 years of Jean’s pancakes made up for whatever
his own cooking lacked.
It wasn’t as if Walter was alone. The kids and their kids all lived
nearby. There were even the beginnings
of another generation to remind him of the delights of childhood. Walter felt like a lucky man to be living
that amazing world of discovery a third time as “Grampa.” His sons came over, often dragging one or
more of their progeny with them. They’d
sit on the back porch and watch the grandkids do the yard work while listening
to whatever ballgame was on the radio.
While the beverages served may have reduced in potency over the years,
the volume of honest laughter had not.
.jpg)
He set the table and folded the newspaper just the way he
liked it, all in preparation for the morning ritual of breakfast. He mixed and
cooked the pancakes, poured his coffee and juice, and settled in for a
leisurely graze of the delicious, maple drizzled cakes while he read the
paper. Sipping his coffee he sighed. Decades had not diminished the pleasure of
that first taste of the morning. After
years and years of rushing, corralling children, and meeting other people’s
schedule demands he enjoyed his mornings unfolding naturally at whatever pace
he chose. Some mornings, he’d even go
back to the bedroom and take an after breakfast nap. Jean would not have approved, but it was one
of his little indulgences. He figured
he’d done his time dancing to other people’s tunes, even his beloved
Jean’s. He’d do as he pleased now. Today he planned on savoring the paper and
enjoying the quiet, sunny Sunday morning.
He started in on the front page, folding and refolding the
paper to the various articles he read, as was his habit. So much of this seemed like foolishness to
him: a lot of fuss about issues which were really quite simple. Why did people insist on making them so? Why
did young folks make life complicated?
Life was really not that difficult: do your best, respect the rights of
others, and mind your own business. He
moved on to the sports section: more
scandals involving steroids and domestic violence. He wondered, and not for the first time, when
celebrity had become so important that athletes felt absolved from the
consequences of abuse. He also muttered
under his breath that people seemed to know far more about the personal lives
of other people than they had back in his day.
“It’s not healthy,” he growled, “being in everyone else’s pockets. Hard enough minding your own affairs much
less to be snooping about in the lives of people you hardly know.”
In disgust, he moved on to the comics and began to
chuckle. “That Dennis the Menace!” The comic strip still made him laugh after
all these years. He checked the
astrology column. Four stars for today,
it said. “I don’t know about that.” he
thought, “My stars seem to be pretty much the same everyday. I’m just glad to have any at all.”
Refolding the paper again he headed for the last stop before
he started on the crossword – the obituaries.
Scanning the page he didn’t see anyone that he knew at first
glance. A blurry photo in the lower
right corner drew his attention. “Boy, they really have let their standards
drop if they printed this!” and he squinted at the words beneath. He made out “Walter James Petersen” moments
before crying “Idiots!” Maybe it was
another Walter Petersen. But as he read
on it was all there:” wife Jean, deceased; children, grandchildren, retired
from Orchard Bay School District
He didn’t read the end of the listing. This had to be a mistake. He shuffled through the phone book looking
for the number to call to report the error.
It was after 10 am; someone should be at the newspaper. He dialed the number and got a recording
telling him his call was important, and asking him to leave a message, which he
did. He wanted to see a retraction
printed or at least, if people were going to think he was dead, he wanted a
better picture printed! “I guess people
don’t work at newspapers on Sunday.” he thought. But they still thought your call was
“important” the friendly voice had assured him.
“If you thought my call was so damned important, you’d have been there
to answer it,” he said to the air.
To be continued . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment