By: Rhonda Kitchens
Suburban Voodoo
She hustled the cup of her husband’s coffee with its morning shadow of grounds to Sister Hannah Mary Swan Song Cantata.
“Oh, this is bad.” Sister Hannah Mary Tango Isis Swan Song Cantata could see no good in the sparse pattern of the grounds.
“Yes, yes?” Pauline’s hands were clenched. Her forehead was seismic.
“Baby, you just need to clean your coffee machine.”
“But Sister Mary Hannah…”
“Look it, Hon, I could sell you a gallon of St. John the Conqueror and hose you for a few hundred dollars and that man would still be seeing Widow Smith.”
“Sister Mary…”
“No, shush, child and stop asking me about your useless man. You can go down to the High Holy Totally Reincarnated His Pacemaker is Still Ticking Moe and you would still be poorer in love with that no good can’t keep it in his pants man.
“I don’t know what to do,” Pauline anguished.
“Well, a lot of your suburban, gated community sisters would just chalk it up to the high cost of living well with a roof over their head and summer vacation roof shielding their precious pale skin when it gets too hot here in the city. A handful of prescription drugs and those Stepford bitches are happy and venomous as jellyfish. My business always dips when they find new way to make everything pretty from Valium to Prozac to Yoga. So many souls need a sedative. Pauline, what makes you want
more?”
“I believe in love.” Pauline was a supra-ballet-piano-recital-Little-League-violin-concerto mom. Her Capri’s were well pressed, fitted yet yielded nothing in terms of her sexuality or soul. Sister Mary Quick Step Hannah Swan Song Cantata added, “You, Pauline, if you do what I say, you’ll have more love than you can imagine in 6 months. Leave him.”
“But…”
“Leave him and the kids and walk out with precisely $30,000 in spending cash. Get yourself the sharkiest, dirtiest lawyer in the Valley.”
“My kids?”
“Honey, women who take their kids are playing martyr and just stupid. That man will make 8 times what you make this year alone. Leave them with the moneybags. No matter what you do, they’re going to hate you. Right now, they hate you for letting that dog doormat you.”
Pauline knew it.
“Children will never love you more than when that dick wielding fool starts parading his silicon enhanced mom replacements trying to get their approval.”
Pauline had seen it.
“What Sister Mary Hannah Swan Song Valerian Cantata tells you is to leave and don’t even go to a school play for six months. Honey, people love most what they cannot have.”
Pauline dropped her bone China coffee cup to the floor with a smash of new found knowledge.
“Pauline, sister,” Sister Mary Hannah Tabasco Altis Swan Song Cantata said, “that’ll be $5 extra plus the usual fee and I’ll throw in a bottle of St. Hi John the Conqueror Powerful Mojo Bubble Bath for free. Just keep it away from open flames. I don’t need the Fire Marshal sniffing around here again.”
________
Grocery shopping had become her grandest luxury. Wide open aisles that she could navigate without fear of her charges breaking things or mouthing unbought cookies into an embarrassing mash. She could buy what she wanted. She didn’t have to plan. Picking up the extra creamy peanut butter, she didn’t have to consider the brand. She could buy a store brand. She picked up the veal without any posh private school whining about veal pens. Her kids were living in a fucking veal pen out there at the estates.
“We’re all dead meat,” Pauline whispered to the pink fillets. “It is simply a matter of style.” And she promised the veal, that latter day golden calf, a lather of lemon sauce dimpled with capers.
Pauline’s short black dress brushed her tan, toned thighs as she straightened up from the meat counter. The stock boy turned away guilty and hot.
The bag boy would not.
________
“Pauline, we need to talk”
“Well now, shouldn’t you be at Edina’s? Isn’t this your ‘work late’ Thursday?”
“Pauline….” he says to a closed door.
________
Pauline, we need to talk.”
“Won’t the kids be worried, sweety? Shouldn’t you be picking Heather up from practice?”
“Pauline….” he says over a moat of the impossible as Pauline pulls the gate up to her castle.
________
“Pauline, for God’s sake, it is the kids. We need to talk.”
“Let me see, my back talking spoiled brat kids and my philandering husband need to talk…”
“Pauline….” he weeps up against a surface into which a door has sealed itself into the smoothness of a wall.
________
Sister Mary Hannah Karpathos Michelob Swan Song Cantata and Pauline share drinks at the Art for the Artfully Downwardly Mobile Fundraiser.
“Sister, you were so right. Love. We waste it on the things that are facing away from us when right in our own hip pocket is the love that passes all understanding.”
Sister Mary Hannah raises an eyebrow and considers she may finally face real competition