Marjorie

It wasn’t until she had turned down her sheets and was already prepared for the cool, three-hundred-thirty-thread-count comfort of her linens that she realized she had forgotten to eat that day. By then, the thought of consumption was too tiring to actualize. Besides, she thought, I’m not even hungry. And I haven’t been all day. And I had three slices of cake yesterday, leftover from- and I’ve been meaning to lose weight- and the kitchen is all the way downstairs- and the prep time- the actual eating of whatever it is I might fix- and the clean-up and-and-and…
Marjorie Chambers was curled in bed before her thought was even finished. She would eat the next morning, she decided. A proper breakfast, as her mother used to say, Yes, a proper breakfast for Emily and me. Eggs…yes eggs, she continued thinking, even in the darkness of her room and the coziness of her king sized bed. And toast, no, muffins- what goes better with toast? What kind of eggs does Emily like? Maybe I should make pancakes? That would be safer. Shit, though, I’m terrible at pancakes. Mother always said you ruined the first one and that was the one for the cook- all of my pancakes are for the cook. And for that matter my eggs. Special K then. Yes, a normal cereal and juice. But fuck…we don’t have milk. At least I don’t think we do. I could go down and check- Yes and while I’m down there I could fix myself something to eat- but then it wouldn’t matter what I eat for breakfast- But Emily needs breakfast too. Did she eat today? Yes I made her dinner and why didn’t I eat then? Are there leftovers? Where was I when dinner- Right, cuz Mark called. Which reminds me, I have to call Mark tomorrow before eleven. Call Mark tomorrow before eleven. Call Mark- Call Mark- Call Mark- Mark- Mark- Mark- before eleven, before eleven- BEFORE eleven- tomorrow-tomorrow-tomorrow. Call Mark tomorrow before eleven.
Marjorie thought like this at nights before sleep, even when David was lying next to her. It was how she tricked herself into falling asleep. A nocturnal distraction. Eventually, like all her sleeps, her thoughts would sail into a black slate of calm and she would be sleeping. Never quite knowing the exact moment she drifted and only realizing she had fallen asleep when she finally awoke. Sometimes her body would catch itself right at the moment she was about to fall and she would have to start all over.
What to think about now? My black pants, non-pleated, look great with the pink dress shirt, but would the grey v-neck look nice over the button-down?
And so it would go until she was sleeping.
It was the forgetting that was beginning to worry Marjorie. Yesterday, she had forgotten to call Mark, her lawyer, about some paperwork. It was this oversight that made Mark call her today. He was irked that it had “slipped her mind”, he said, thinking she had forgotten willfully to delay his day even more. Marjorie wanted to tell him that this problem of hers, this syndrome, extended beyond phone calls. It started with the trivialities. The dry-cleaning, unplugging the coffee pot. More rapidly than not, it began to seep into more pivotal doings. She had missed Emily’s parent-teacher conference and stood-up her best friend Delilah for lunch…twice. While driving to work or returning home, she would miss a turn or turn too early (usually turning right into a neighborhood she knew was now out of her price bracket). Bills would pile on the table and her mailbox was full. Her answering machine stopped receiving incoming messages because Marjorie could never remember to check it when she got home and the tape had reached is capacity. Her cell phone was useless to her now because she always forgot to charge it in the evenings and that was of little import, because she rarely ever remembered to take it along with her when she would leave the house.
Her teeth went un-brushed for days. Her contacts would spend days in her eyes or days out of her eyes (those days turned driving into a bigger chore than it already was and could probably account for why she would miss her turns). One evening, Marjorie went so far as to place her contact lenses into their case, but never added the saline solution to keep them fresh. And now-
Now she was forgetting to eat.
There were steps of course. Gimmicks. Gimmicks to help her remember. One of her earliest memories of her father was a frayed red piece of yarn tied around his chubby, chapped index finger.
“Your mother tells me to bring more wood for the stove, and I don’t. So she ties this around my digit…to keep her feet warm. To remind me.” Marjorie remembers her father’s hands. She remembers the wood burning stove. The way the creosote would drip down through the cracks in the aluminum exhaust.
Childhood memories had tricked her. They left her brain when she didn’t need to remember her long-past nostalgias. They absconded so she wouldn’t miss them. She mourned their loss, but resigned herself to not really needing them. Those aren’t the memories that get her up in the morning. They aren’t the thoughts that pay the bills. They are not the baubles that pick her daughter up from school. These- THESE are essential; the bills, the daughter.
So Marjorie turned to rubber bands. Tying yarn around her finger would be something she copied from her mother (Dear God don’t let me end up like my mother!).
It was her thirteen year old daughter, Emily, who gave her the idea. She watched the adolescent launch band after band, marauding the household cat, Sinclair. Emily eventually tired of her pestering and turned to masochistic delight. Sliding the rubber band around her wrist, she began to snap it against the tender underside, where blue veins were visible. A small distance at first; hardly creating a sound. And then an inch from her wrist, produce a small, crisp smack and a light sting. Then two inches, smack smacking with vibrations and leaving concentric red lines. Finally, stretched to its threshold, three inches. Emily stared at the band not wanting to let it snap, but too curious to stop. She inhaled, sharply closed her eyes and let go.
“SSS,” she hissed, “Damn I’m smart. That hurt.”
Marjorie rolled her eyes, “Why do you do it if it hurts? And don’t say damn.”
“To see what it feels like, moth-er.” Emily retorted.
“Well remember that next time, before you give yourself a bruise.” Emily turned drolly to her mother using the all too common I-am-a-young-woman-of-unflappable-superiority look and dropped the rubber band to the kitchen table. Almost challenging her mother to pick it up.
“I’m gonna go watch TV,” Emily was out of the kitchen before her decree was even finished and that plain tan rubber band was around Marjorie’s wrist before her daughter had time to turn to channel two.
It was an easy enough way to remind herself of all the trivialities she needed to do. Light bill, phone bill- snap, snap, snap. Simple, every time I look at the rubber band I’ll think of the bills. And I will pay them. It was when she started wearing multiple rubber bands and color coding them, that Marjorie worried her rubber pneumatism might have become an obsession.
Tan was for bills. Red bands, the kind that bind newspapers, were work related tasks. Green bands, also commonly found on those small circulars that her alderman or local delivery boy would leave bound to her front doorknob, were for all things concerning Emily. When Marjorie had started her rubber trick, Emily had had green hair, so it was a natural connection. Emily’s hair had since gone from green to blue to dark natural brown and back to blue. Emily’s band was still green, because that was one less thing Marjorie had to keep track of. Blue bands, which Marjorie had to purchase from a local office supply store, were for all matters concerning Mark. Since the funeral, there had been documents to sign, fax, copy, file and compile.
Sad, she thought, that David doesn’t have a band. But I suppose I won’t forget…and if I did…maybe it is something that should be forgotten.
“So,” Marjorie said aloud, finally breaking the silence and stillness of her bedroom, “Should ‘reminding myself to eat’ be work related or Emily related? It isn’t Mark related, thank effing God, and it certainly isn’t a bill…” Marjorie paused. “How could I not have a rubber band for myself?”
Jesus Christ, did I really just say that out loud to my ceiling? Is that why it has that crack? Did I say too many stupid things to my ceiling? Did I unload too much bull-shit and now it can’t bear the weight of it all? Marjorie Chambers…Marjorie….you are going insane…and you need to sleep.
She began again, Breakfast for Emily, Breakfast for Emily, Breakfast for Emily…
Every night she would chant what is it she needed to do the next day just so she could remember. Program herself. Chanting over and over, until she would fall into that slate of calm.
I wonder, she thought seconds away from drifting into her slumber, Is this what happens to most people who grieve. Do they forget too?
Her body jerked and her head twitched into her pillow. Call Mark tomorrow, call mark tomorrow, Call Mark tomorrow…