by Karen Walker
Two things there, neither true.
Susan is the dimming bulb over the kitchen table.
On the lazy susan on the table are her preserves: salty cantaloupe marmalade, papaya-mango-banana-lime jam, and, in case of a whoop, homemade cough syrup made by boiling bark.
Contrast. Preserves are love. So you’d think.
Hers? Foils. Flavours trying too hard, missing the occasional ant or twig when dazzled by the radiant colours captured in jars her mother didn’t pass down.
Irony. Susan spins the lazy susan. What a hard worker I am.
If, as she’d have us believe, she’s The Sun, the teens snoring upstairs would be stars. Susan collects minor hockey league players, billets them on soiled saggy cots in the attic. Someday, she’ll jar a star. I knew him way back when.
Her daughter, a planet stuck in orbit, lives in this small town. Her husband is a moon waxing and waning in every job he gets. Every night too, when he rolls off Susan before climaxing.
At Silver Pines Retirement Residence, Susan has discovered a lady who, like her late mother, is named Esther. They were both born on the 19th, Living Esther in February and Late Esther in June.
This morning, Susan’s mother would’ve turned 78 had she lived. Susan goes to Silver Pines to festoon the vestibule with balloons, to take selfies with sleepy cranky Living Esther and a sticky jar of sweet mushroom relish.
Contrast again. Susan texts her planet daughter. She’s a ballerina. U really need knee surgery? Can U do anything? Dance to something adagio? A slow little show for the oldies?
Home. Susan squeezes in the front door. Everywhere there are boxes of T-shirts in sunny yellow saying nothing, ready for her unlicensed, self-elected fundraising for Silver Pines or the hockey league or anywhere else she can shine.
Karen Walker is in a basement in Ontario, Canada. Her most recent work is in or forthcoming in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Misery Tourism, Centaur, Cosmorama, Overheard, and Bending Genres.
