Aging Gracefully

I just couldn’t remember where I left my gun after menopause set in. That’s what happens when a woman lives too long, has used up her reason for existing. They call it menopause. I call it hell on earth.

Distance should help but it doesn’t. I’ve been breaking apart for too long. I sit in places like this and tangle my hair up in my fingers, the stuff growing from my head that used to be mine. It’s dry and bristly and faded now and down past my shoulders. There’s too much of it that’s lost its color and I don’t even think of it as mine anymore, don’t know why it stings my head when I tangle it up too much. Just something for these bony, wrinkly hands to do. I groan suddenly, out loud without caring, and bend over into the ground. I try not to miss him so much. It doesn’t work and usually I end up crying and someone walks along, sees me, and figures me for one of those types who hangs out in old, abandoned train yards. I am.

I raise my blotchy face because the sun is rising and love the feel of it. Even when it’s bone cold, that first burst of sunshine never fails to drag some heat with it. Sure enough, I get to close my eyes and drink in some tiny piece it brought for me, just for me. I breathe deeply of frigid, stale air, but I don’t care. For a moment the sun is warm.

And then it’s gone. I shiver, colder than ever, and wrap the old blue coat tighter around me. I begin to rock for warmth and here I go again. I try not to miss him so much but it goes down deep, the keening of my soul. I can’t get over it. They tell you that time gets you over it. If that’s true something’s wrong with me, just like everyone says. Because I feel like it happened just now. That first second he was gone the stabbing sharpness in my chest made me think I was having a heart attack. Now it’s a constant, dull ache. I never ever get rid of it no matter what. Not sucking down a bottle of vodka, not sleeping for twenty hours, nothing. There’s a wailing whistle that cuts through early morning silence and I decide this is it, the day I’m going to do what I’ve wanted to do ever since I can’t stop aching. Today is the day.

I breathe deeply, relieved I’ve finally come to some kind of decision. For days I’ve been sitting here, surrounded by rusted metal and frozen ground, waiting for that whistle I’ve always loved so much. I shiver again and wish for one of those blasted furnace flashes, the ones that start way down inside my stomach and wave up into my face. Better than the sunshine for getting warm. Ah, here it comes. I welcome the wave, blood pumping its heat into my face and I can sit up again. I’m toasty in the middle of January, in a junkyard full of people’s debris.

When I first came to this place I liked it. All that trash says something about the people who lived with the stuff when it wasn’t trash. A few days ago I found a whole bunch of lipstick in the back of an old car with no doors. It’s cranberry red and I can’t stand to look at it. For some reason the color makes me nauseated. The stuff isn’t any good, but I think about why it’s there and figure out her story. She sold makeup from her car, the woman who once owned it, until she couldn’t anymore because the car died. Died died died. Even cars die. I can’t help wondering why. Did she kill it?

I try to stand but it’s difficult because I’ve been sitting here for hours, waiting for some solution to magically appear before me. I hear the whistle again and my chest pounds, and not just from palpitations of “change-of-life.” For the first time in a long time I know the feeling of exhilaration. I’m ready. I don’t want to sit here anymore, this trash heap doesn’t hold the appeal it did a few days ago. I begin to walk, shaking out my sore legs first. I still hobble and I probably look really old to anyone who happens to see me. The blonde highlights in that tangled mess of hair are faded and I’m real for the first time in probably forever.

Ever since my mother threw me into my first pageant when I was two I’ve been forced to care about things like hair and nails and how to walk and what to eat and how to throw it up. It feels good not to care, anymore, and I can’t help letting a chuckle escape from my chapped lips. I must look like hell and my mother is rolling over in her grave. I remember all the pageants while I amble towards the rusty tracks. First there was Little Miss Firecracker and then Miss Sweetheart.. On and on until I’m grown and married and then I still have to think about it, getting my teeth done and my hair teased until I cried from the pain; waxing every part of my poor body that was unfortunate enough to grow hair. I wince at the memory.

As I stand at the edge of those tracks I start to think about Roy again. I wish I never had to think about him ever and a singular tear winds its way down my wrinkled, makeup-free face. I inhale a deep, shuddering sigh that I breathe out into the frigid air as the whistle sounds closer. Thank goodness it won’t be too long now. Roy. I’m so sorry Roy. My lovely teeth, now stained with coffee and tomato soup from the mission, bites my bottom lip to keep from wailing like the train. I hope, wherever Roy is, that someone is taking care of him. I can’t help letting loose with a sniffle. He does love those little chew things and I left them on the blood-spattered counter. I hope someone thinks to give them to him, one at a time, of course so they’ll last. I won’t be there to get him more. I sob a little but do my best to suck it back in while another heat wave racks my body.

I unzip my blue coat and flap the openings to fan myself while I wait on that slow-moving train. It’s not really my coat and I wrinkle my nose when I think about whose it really is. I couldn’t bring mine because it’s sticky with all that red goo. Who knew there was so much blood in one person? I remember now, pushing Roy back from it so he wouldn’t keep licking at it and get it into his prizewinning fur. And no one, especially not my precious Lhasa apso, needs that bastard’s blood running through them.

Then I see the train. It’s rounding the curve and I take another breath, my chest dancing as I back up and make ready, ready...(it’s been so long since I did anything like this, but does a body ever really forget how to jump?) It’s getting ever closer, wheels clack clacking, metal on metal faster and faster and I can feel my faded eyes glaze over and widen in anticipation. I’m so glad I thought of this-

And it’s here. I leap one gigantic, bone crunching time and miracle of miracles, I actually make it, gripping the edge of the open car door with breaking nails as I swing myself up and into it. The pounding inside me, the tremors that let loose while I lay on that dusty train floor makes me wonder if I’m going to make it past this place, but gradually I feel it all slow down. I smile up at the ceiling covered in spiderwebs. I’m excited for sure, but I bite my lip again when I think about little Roy and his fur so easily tangled. Is someone brushing it?

“Dammit,” I mutter to myself. If only Daniel hadn’t been such a turd. I get so ticked off when I think about him and I have to force myself to calm down because I’ll scream if I’m not careful. I could stand his indiscretion, all the little girls he paraded through his office and bed after he figured I was used up. I could stand his not showing up at home for days and giving me some dumbass excuse he really thought I was stupid enough to buy. I could even stand his horrendous taste in clothes and art and his incessant need to put me down in front of his friends. But when he pushed at my beautiful little Roy with his nasty, disgusting wing tip–well, I couldn’t let that pass, could I?

I can’t help a tiny smile of satisfaction when I recall the resounding bang that rang in my ears and Daniel’s shock when he saw the blood spurting from his midsection before he dropped to the parquet floor. I just wish I could remember where I dropped the damn gun, but that’s the hell of menopause. My brain must be melting from all the hot flashes. And now poor Roy is without his Mama and he doesn’t know why. I wipe more tears from my chapping, wrinkled face, and I turn to watch the scenery whizz by. I whisper his name and picture him in the bowels of hell. Daniel Stiles, kicker of little innocent, champion show dogs. The bastard.


WC: 1631