Sediment Lies

            It was just shy of midnight on a Tuesday when Caroline Ashby realized her life had been wasted.  The epiphany caught her in bed, stretched out next to her sleeping husband, while she was reading Eight Simple Ways To Improve Your Life by Doctor Emmett Wilsson.  The contents of the book really had nothing to do with her discovery, it was simply a situation of a boring book making her mind wander and contemplate everything from what to make for dinner tomorrow night to what ever became of her third college boyfriend and it all ultimately led to the explosive penetration from her subconscious mind to her conscious one of her belief that her entire past had been congealing in a jello mold of futility.  This notion made Caroline upset, naturally, and once she was through being lost in tumultuous thought while staring at the cat lying at the end of the bed while it twitched and jerked its way through a bad dream, she tossed her book away and ran downstairs for the telephone. 

            Jean Canonera had been Caroline’s best friend since high school and they shared as many similarities with each other as they did differences.  They were both in their mid-thirties and had husbands and still lived in the large town/small city where they slumbered through their youth.  They both loved Volvos and chocolate shakes from McDonald’s and books by S.E. Hinton.  Sometimes they would get bored and sit in one of their Volvos and read The Outsiders to each other while sipping milkshakes in the McDonald’s parking lot.  Yet their dissimilarities were the elements which made them able to stand each other so well for so long.  Caroline had given birth and Jean had not.  Caroline wanted to be loved by all, whereas Jean didn’t give a damn and lived only to amuse herself.  Caroline was prone to thinking a situation out before settling on an action to take, while Jean was more prone to follow her “what the hell does it matter anyway” philosophy.  Neither of them were abundant talkers, either, which certainly didn’t hinder their friendship.  They enjoyed each other’s company and laughed well together.

            In fact, Jean was laughing when Caroline called.  She was immersed in a dream which imagined her floating over an ocean, dropping heavy anvils on her drowning ex-boyfriends below, when suddenly the anvils turned into large church bells.  Each time they hit their target, they rang not with the usual heavy clang of iron steeple bells, but rather with the electronic bede-bede-be which normally signaled an incoming call on her home telephone.  Her dream was rudely cut short by the groggy voice of her husband, George.

            “Hell…?”  During waking hours, George spoke with an alto pitch which led some to believe that he “walked on the other side of the tracks” sexually, but now, three hours into his nightly rest, he sounded like Clint Eastwood.  His fleshy ear muffled the voice which projected from the phone’s receiver.  With great difficulty, he turned his body over in bed and dropped the phone on his wife, mumbling something about “Jean” and “Caroline,” then fell back into immediate unconsciousness.  Jean paused before patting down the comforter in search of the phone.  She found it by following the cord with her fingers and unintentionally hit several buttons with her nose before landing it on her ear.  “Marshmallows!” she said without sense. 

            In the den of the Ashby residence, Caroline was pacing with delirious frenzy.  “My life has been wasted!” she whispered with enthusiasm, not wanting to wake the household with her toil.

            “Wha?” Jean’s mouth was numbed by her state. 

            “I’m thirty-six years old, Jeanie.  If you had asked me when I was twelve where I’d be at thirty-six, I’d’ve told you anywhere but where I am now!”  She was holding her head as though her hair were about to fall off.  “I’ve accomplished none of my goals!”

            Jean had no empathy at this late hour and said so.  “I ‘ave no empthy a’ ‘is hour,” she mumbled, but Caroline was busy expatiating her woes.

            “I’ve never been to Europe!  I’ve never been skydiving!  I’ve never—” she paused, scouring her mind through the many tasks she had yet to achieve, “—done community theater!  I’ve never made love with the perfect man!”

            Jean’s body was desperate for more rest, yet her brain made her ask, “Wha ‘bout Ike?”

            Caroline ignored the question.  “I’ve had an epiphany tonight, just now!  I was up reading and it hit me: where I was, what I was doing….  I’ve let time slip away and suddenly I’m a middle-aged housewife with a spoiled two-year-old and a forty-year-old husband named ‘Ike!’  Now that I think about it, I might even be a trophy wife!  Sweet Jesus, Jeanie, are we trophy wives?”  She was frantic with the thought that it might be true. 

            Jean could not answer, for she had fallen back to sleep.  “Jean?” Caroline’s digital voice called out.  “JEAN!”

            Jean started awake.  “Toasty!” she cried.

            “What does my life mean?” Caroline wondered aloud.

            “I don’ unnerstand,” Jean slurred.  “You wan’ me to answer tha’?”

            The fact that Jean was not in a condition to make rational thought began to dawn on Caroline.  “Jean, c’mon, I’m in real trouble here.  Wake up!” she pleaded.

            Jean smiled.  “OK!  See you at the movies.”  With that, she hung the phone up on George’s face.  Caroline was calling out for her through the receiver, but both she and George were fast asleep. 

            The telephone in the den of the Ashby home was slammed back into its cradle.  A moment later it was rained on by several tears which fell from Caroline’s chin.  She ran her hands down the sides of her nose and sniffled back the fluid which moved furtively toward her lip.  Despair, she thought, was one hell of a downer. 

             She trudged her way upstairs and back into the bedroom, where the cat now lay sleeping on Doctor Emmett Wilsson’s book.  She stared at Muddypaws for a moment, considered the placid life of a feline, then thought of how the name “Muddypaws” sounded like the word “menopause.”  That sent her reeling into a new wave of despondency as she ruminated on how bad it was now and compared it to how bad it was likely to get in five or fifteen years when she reached the age of bodily change.  She dragged her sheepskin slippers across the floor to the bathroom, where she found four Advils to toss down her gullet and a handful of water to wash them down with.

            Sudden fatigue overpowered her senses and caused her to sit on the lip of the bathtub.  It was quite late and she had been awake since Ike had risen for work that morning at six o’clock.  Twenty minutes of napping in the afternoon had restored some of her potency, but by now her body had been dealt enough stress and activity to demand an emergency cessation.  She conjured up enough energy to rise and plod back into the bedroom.

            Perhaps it wasn’t all such a horrid thing, her life.  Maybe she truly was a lucky one.  After all, she remembered, we always want what we don’t have.  She did have a pretty daughter who was beginning to make sense with her words and a languid yet reliable husband who seemed to love her.  They lived in a nicely-painted, moderate home in a nearly-wealthy neighborhood.  Things could be better, of course, but they could also be much worse. 

            Caroline pulled the book out from under the cat, sending him scurrying away.  She thumbed through the pages until she found the place where her mind had strayed and marked it by folding the page corner down.  Doctor Wilsson’s eager face beamed up at her from the nightstand as she set her alarm for six o’clock.  She tossed her bathrobe over a chair and kicked her slippers under it.  The soft bedside light was extinguished with a “click!” and Caroline sank snugly under the comforter to let her thoughts dissolve as she gently settled into compliance with her life.