Loose Marbles

Loose Marbles

by J. G. Woodward

Invincible Publishing

1738 Northampton Road #1507

Akron, Ohio 44313

T: (330) 923-8405

W: www.InvinciblePublishing.com

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by J. G. Woodward

ISBN: 9781370564453

Acknowledgments

This book is dedicated to Kathy Altieri, who is the inspiration behind its penning, to Dustin Blakeslee, for believing in me and for the long-term maintenance of my neurochemistry, and to Clare DeLaura, Judy McVicker, and Rex McVicker, my beacons on the long sail of my night.

My pen only moves across the page because of those who have gone before me: Dr. Bob and Bill W. All that I am is because of my Higher Power: God is great!

CHAPTER ONE

Her hand reaches to the top shelf of the medicine cabinet, retrieving the oversized bottle of sleeping pills. The other hand closes the cabinet door, revealing Joan’s reflection. A tired, weary, hopeless expression stares blankly back at herself. Years of despair culminate in this moment – the last moment of Joan’s chore of a life. Twenty-nine years of strife and struggle are not remedied by all of life’s blessings. One can be grateful and depressed at the same time.

With barely a moment’s hesitation, she downs the entire contents of the bottle, moves across the bedroom, and lies down on the bed.

_____

But Mom, I don’t wanna take ballet lessons!

Five year old Joan pleads with her mother. It is a futile argument. She will spend the rest of her childhood trying to be who everybody wants her to be, always striving for the next public acknowledgement of her existence. They ultimately come in forms of trophies, accolades, teacher’s approving nods, pageant judge’s scores and the like. No one ever asked Joan if she wanted to do any of these things. It was just expected.

Now, Joan. Stop whining. It makes your face look ugly. I was already on my way to my first competition at your age. Come on, now. You want to make Mommy happy, don’t you?

Yes, Mother.

Joan had already begun protesting her entrapment by the age of five, getting away with calling her, Mother, whenever possible. Joan didn’t really know why at that young age, but it seemed to fit her better than, Mommy. To Joan, Mommy, seemed too informal for the nature of their relationship. From time to time, her mother would protest and ask Joan to call her by the more informal, Mommy.

Wendy says, ‘Mommy;’ why don’t you?

Joan spent the rest of her days being compared to Wendy. Wendy was nice enough to Joan, even likable. Spending one’s life always compared to another is the breeding ground for resentment, at a minimum.

Wendy was not only dainty and poised; she was also a good athlete – not a common combination. Joan was a strong girl with a grace of her own; she just never really excelled at any one particular activity. Marginal, is how Joan frequently referred to herself, all the way into adulthood.

_____

Joan’s eyes flutter half open, focusing upon a noisy blue jay perched outside of the window. It is as if it is sending out an all point bulletin to the neighborhood wildlife that help is needed.

She wonders if the recollection of her childhood was a dream. Perhaps it was a hallucination brought on by the overdose. In the moment when Joan should have panicked, realizing what she had done, she felt a certain peacefulness. Those that attempt suicide as a cry for help in the same moment would dial 911. It never crossed Joan’s mind as her eyes closed, and she left the planet’s consciousness.

_____

Joan sits on the bed in her room, lanky and tall for her age of thirteen. Trophies and ribbons adorn the walls, markers of her seeming worth in life. She pages through a magazine, obviously not really paying attention, just passing time.

Joan, it’s time to go, a cry is heard from beyond her doorway.

Coming, Mother, Joan yells, projecting her voice toward the hallway.

She slowly heads down the hallway and traverses the grand staircase, spiraling down toward the foyer. Joan’s mother waits impatiently.

Honestly, Joan, I would think you would be more excited about this fitting. Really.

Joan is on the edge of outright rebellion of her mother’s expectations and this, it will turn out, is to be the last of her acquiescence to her mother’s wishes. She is to attend a formal dance, her date already selected on her behalf by what surely must have been a covenant made at birth by family friends. Her date is a handsome young man who reached puberty last summer. Joan still has not gotten her menses and is self-conscious when changing in the locker room. She found her strength in soccer, which was a compromise between her desire to play football and her mother’s desire for her to be a prima ballerina.

And will you please stand up straight?

Yes, mother.

The two of them get into the car and drive through the city streets to the storefront of the seamstress. Joan looks older than her thirteen years, wiser somehow, more pained than a girl of her age should be. There’s deadness in her gaze, as though the soul of her being is imprisoned behind her eyes. It is not so dissimilar from the same look within the eyes of an African elephant, just captured and loaded into the truck that will eventually deliver him to the circus, to spend the remainder of its days performing for the crowds, rather than roaming the wild lands.

Joan’s mother has noticed this on occasion, when Joan is across the room and unaware of being observed, or in family photographs where the lens was focused on somebody else, Joan standing off by herself in the background. She looks lost. Strangely, when the camera is turned to Joan, this ghost that inhabits her disappears and she gleams in a way that is magnetic to others.

As Joan grows into adulthood, there begins to be a physical demonstration of this metamorphosis from how she feels to how she looks to others. Just moments before she steps onto the stage, or the field, or into the office building, her posture straightens, her chin raises, and a slight, ever-present smile forms on her lips. Always meticulously groomed and styled in fashionable clothes, no one is ever any the wiser. To the world, she is a polished, confident, competent, woman of distinguished character. And then there is what lay beneath.

_____

Joan is jolted back into consciousness by machines in the emergency room. For a moment, she registers her surroundings – the bright lights of the hospital, the doctors and nurses in hospital garb, the strain in their voices.

We’re losing her again. Hurry up!

Joan feels her body heave with the electrical current surging through her body and then she feels as though she is floating at the ceiling line. She sees her body lying on the gurney, tubes everywhere and people hurrying about. Underneath the apparatus on her face, she sees a body that looks older than its twenty-nine years.

She finds herself hovering at the top of the emergency room waiting area and watches as Jackie Mack’s truck speeds into the parking lot. The ladders mounted on top of the truck bed jostle from the sharp turn into the parking spot. The door reading, JM Contracting, opens and Jackie rushes out of the truck and into the emergency room, complete panic on her face.

Jackie hurries to the nurse at the desk.

I got a call that my partner, Joan, is here.

"Yes, Ms. Mack.