sodden hopes and Rich Desserts by Jon Fain
As she settled in at The Haven, or what she called it, Dwindling Pines, Sherron saw that many of the other residents believed they were somewhere else, somewhere unlike where they actually were. It had become a substitute reality. A cohort of the relatively ambulatory congregated in various showoffs like shuffleboard and sing-alongs. They pretended to ignore the miasmic odors of decline, fluctuating extremes of temperature, and cries, shouts and bellows echoing in the halls, especially at night.
In time, and without any evidence, she came to believe in her own myth: that the chow was superior in the dementia wing—plenty of cobbler, with only the choicest fruits, was being served up behind those locked doors.
There would be additional fees to move over and her daughter would balk. Kris hadn’t come to see Sherron since moving her in with her stuffed pigs, souvenir spoon collection, and new teapot, but that was all right. Like her father, Kris had eyes shallow as paint, and was twice as untrustworthy.
Ernie had died some years before; Sherron was no longer so good with dates so no longer tried to remember when exactly. Their journey had started to decay like that of a dying space capsule with two screaming astronauts inside. He bailed out before she could, collapsed doing yard work one brisk Sunday morning before his beloved football.
Now, at the Pines, Sherron cased the joint. She hovered by the locked looney bin, watched staff card themselves in and out. She initiated her commitment to get committed at the next monthly talent show. In front of a packed crowd in the social room, she burlesqued under the nom de strip Betsy Rossputin. She jettisoned her red dress, white bra and panties, and blue shoes leaving only the tri-cornered hat she’d crafted together from two decks of purloined playing cards. The activity director tried to cover her up with a handful of stained snack napkins as she sauntered out the door.
Her performance didn’t move her any closer to Cobbler Land; there was a waiting list dating back to Old Man Bush. Speaking of bush, what it did do was get the attention of a clutch of geezers looking to get their ends wet. While she brooded next steps, she considered one of them.
Chris with a C was good-natured. He was two hairs short of useless on practical matters, but because of where they were it didn’t matter if he couldn’t change a tire or wouldn’t take out the trash. His wife died leaving him among other things a mobility scooter, a sweet dark blue beauty fully functional with forward and reverse. Thanks to her approach, he got so enamored of Sherron he let her use it in the long hallways of Dwindling Pines while he held her hand and walked along beside.
After her two week suspension from the common areas for “conduct unbecoming,” she and Chris with a C had dinner in the dining room. She picked at her plate of blanched meat by-product, stewed red thing, and past prime mush while he gummed at the grub with gusto. She perked up when he produced a flask of Mr. Boston vodka at regular intervals, smuggling splashes into their tepid decafs.
As they got sloshed, Chris with a C began to woo her with whispered pornographic promises, to which she was relatively amenable. He tried to keep up as she scooted down the halls to the wing where they both had their apartments. She had never been in his room, and wasn’t willing to give up her home field advantage, so stopped by her door and waited.
He wanted to see Rossputin redux; she wanted to get it over with and so whipped off her duds and sat on her bed in the all-together as he fumbled free of his Kiss Me I’m Albanian sweat-suit and sag-ass boxers. His mushroom member brought back memories of Ernie’s withered thing and Sherron felt a pang of nostalgia.
He got under the covers and she joined him in a handsy joust of this and that. While the vodka had brought boldness it was for a cock he couldn’t cash. He fell asleep first. She awoke at dawn in the midst of a dream sodden with images of her dead husband, her left hand on a cold soaked sheet, courtesy of Chris with a Pee.
At some point, he’d left and gone back to his room. He got discovered by the morning wellness check, barely there. He must have lacked the Don’t Bother paperwork; a pair of young EMTs came past her room with bouncing equipment and a rattling stretcher. From what she’d seen with Ernie in her backyard, Sherron knew these people did not do nuance. They leapt on chests and pounded static hearts. Rather than see Chris wheeled past open-mouthed she went back into her room and let the aide who was stripping the bed berate her about the timing of nightly fluids.
The next day, because there was no one else, she sorted through a box of photos, which ones to display. His wife was a better looker than she’d imagined. Like he’d claimed, there was no evidence of kids. At the service in the social room, led by some back-bencher farmed in from the local pedophile klatch, she sat close to the exit astride the blue scooter that had fortuitously fallen to her, possession being the etc.
Prayer was just a hole to bury your hopes in. A substitute reality. The thing was, when it came to what time she had left, she deserved far more than Dwindling Pines but Dwindling Pines would have to do.
So sparked with the self-justification that had always been her religion, with tongue slipping out between her lips in anticipation of the cobbler and even richer desserts to come, timing it to when the slowest aide was about to tap her card and waddle her way in, Sherron cranked that sweet blue ride up to 11, and made a run for it.
Jon Fain’s publications include short stories in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Feign, and King Ludd’s Rag; flash fictions in Shooter, Hawkeye, and The Airgonaut; micro fictions in Blink-Ink and Molecule; and essays in Lit Mag News, Thin Places, and Sport Literate.
