The Big C
When Mary tells us, she has the Big C, she doesn’t mean the
vitamins she has been selling me and Pauly over the last few years.
Pauly’s face pales his knuckles get white from the tightening grip his has on his coffee cup in one hand and the greasy paper bag with his buttered roll in the other.
Mary, a pleasantly plump woman older than us by at least two decades, reminds me of my mother or even Garrick’s aunt, only instead of wearing flowered dressed or an apron splattered with spaghetti sauce, she generally wears a white shirt, and black slacks, and thick, black-rimmed eyeglasses she only wears when taking inventory.
She knows us both by name, just as she knows everybody that way, waving at them as they pass her store window in the Garfield strip mall on their way to Quick Chek at one end, the Polish bank at the other or the laundromat next door.
She has no bad words for anyone, full of cheer and recommendations for our living a full and healthy life, things we might take to make our lives better, selling me and Pauly on the latest miracle supplements she is certain we need, reading our health from our faces the way the gypsies downtown read fortunes from tea leaves.
Pauly loves her almost as much as he loves his real mom, though mockingly claims she reminds him of one of those felt painting puppies they sell at the mall – she has those kind of puppy eyes.
She worries bout me at school, knowing that I have gone back to college, so I won’t have to break my back any more working in a warehouse like I have for the better part of the last decade.
“That kind of work isn’t healthy,” she says. “You should be a professor with all the books I see you carrying around.”
For the most part, she likes Pauly just the way he is, except she thinks he wastes time working in a Fotomat snooping at the pictures people bring in to get developed.
“You have too much talent for that,” she tells him, even though she has never heard hi sing, and wants to, inviting both of us to come to her Bible study at the church where she is sure other people will appreciate his singing, too.
“I don’t do that kind of singing,” Pauly tells her.
“It’s no matter,” she tells him. “The Lord loves all kind of music. Maybe you can learn a hymn to sing. God would love that, too.”
“Maybe,” Pauly always mumbles, then changes the subject to ask what kind of supplement she recommends this week, and we with our limited income, can afford.
She always gives us sample, then grills us later as to how they make us feel. I generally feel nothing; I always tell her I feel fine.
Pauly believes all this more than I do, compiling pills up on a shelf in his room while reading all the books on health Mary recommends, citing them as if scripture whenever we’re some place else, having learn some new lesson from Mary I’m to thick to learn for myself.
He eats better than I do, insisting on milk in his coffee rather than processed half and half, butter on his roll rather than margarine, turkey and swiss rather than roast beef or ham.
So, when Mary tells him she has the Big C, Pauly – for the first time in his long life – is speechless, his eyed pleading with her for it to be untrue, and when she says it’s hopeless, he deflates.
Later, I find bottles of pills in the trash and hear him in his room humming the hymn “Amazing Grace.”
Main Menu
email to Al Sullivan 
Pauly’s face pales his knuckles get white from the tightening grip his has on his coffee cup in one hand and the greasy paper bag with his buttered roll in the other.
Mary, a pleasantly plump woman older than us by at least two decades, reminds me of my mother or even Garrick’s aunt, only instead of wearing flowered dressed or an apron splattered with spaghetti sauce, she generally wears a white shirt, and black slacks, and thick, black-rimmed eyeglasses she only wears when taking inventory.
She knows us both by name, just as she knows everybody that way, waving at them as they pass her store window in the Garfield strip mall on their way to Quick Chek at one end, the Polish bank at the other or the laundromat next door.
She has no bad words for anyone, full of cheer and recommendations for our living a full and healthy life, things we might take to make our lives better, selling me and Pauly on the latest miracle supplements she is certain we need, reading our health from our faces the way the gypsies downtown read fortunes from tea leaves.
Pauly loves her almost as much as he loves his real mom, though mockingly claims she reminds him of one of those felt painting puppies they sell at the mall – she has those kind of puppy eyes.
She worries bout me at school, knowing that I have gone back to college, so I won’t have to break my back any more working in a warehouse like I have for the better part of the last decade.
“That kind of work isn’t healthy,” she says. “You should be a professor with all the books I see you carrying around.”
For the most part, she likes Pauly just the way he is, except she thinks he wastes time working in a Fotomat snooping at the pictures people bring in to get developed.
“You have too much talent for that,” she tells him, even though she has never heard hi sing, and wants to, inviting both of us to come to her Bible study at the church where she is sure other people will appreciate his singing, too.
“I don’t do that kind of singing,” Pauly tells her.
“It’s no matter,” she tells him. “The Lord loves all kind of music. Maybe you can learn a hymn to sing. God would love that, too.”
“Maybe,” Pauly always mumbles, then changes the subject to ask what kind of supplement she recommends this week, and we with our limited income, can afford.
She always gives us sample, then grills us later as to how they make us feel. I generally feel nothing; I always tell her I feel fine.
Pauly believes all this more than I do, compiling pills up on a shelf in his room while reading all the books on health Mary recommends, citing them as if scripture whenever we’re some place else, having learn some new lesson from Mary I’m to thick to learn for myself.
He eats better than I do, insisting on milk in his coffee rather than processed half and half, butter on his roll rather than margarine, turkey and swiss rather than roast beef or ham.
So, when Mary tells him she has the Big C, Pauly – for the first time in his long life – is speechless, his eyed pleading with her for it to be untrue, and when she says it’s hopeless, he deflates.
Later, I find bottles of pills in the trash and hear him in his room humming the hymn “Amazing Grace.”
Comments
Post a Comment