Writings

Coming Apart

by Theresa Martin

The day I came apart I met Janie for lunch at Guisseppe's, our favorite Italian restaurant. I found myself staring at the candle in the middle of the table. The flickering light hurt my eyes and I sat silently blinking back tears. Janie paused suddenly in the middle of her story about her husband's latest affair. Maybe she noticed I was not talking. She asked, "How are you? You look pale."

I covered my ears. I wanted to say, "Do you mind not screeching? You sound like nails scraping a blackboard." Instead I said, "I'm fine."

Her blue eyes bounced like crazy balls around her face, almost jumped out at me. I wanted to smash them back across the table with a ping pong paddle.

"Really. I'm fine."

Her eyes lunged at me, then snapped to attention and focused on her watch.

"Hurry and finish your lunch. There's a great sale at Nordstrom's. Everything's marked way down. And I need to finish telling you about Joey and Lucille. He's lucky I don't leave him for good."

" I can't go today," I said.

She pulled some money out of her wallet, tapped her long red nails on the tabletop.

"Come on." She stood up, grabbed my arm, and pulled me along.

"No, I said," but she did not listen. I let go of my arm. She took it with her, did not seem to notice that the rest of me stayed behind. I went to my office without my left arm.

"Have you lost weight?" Alice asked as I entered the building.

"No, only my left arm."

" Well you look great! By the way, Harry wants to see you pronto."

I hurried to the twenty-sixth floor. My boss waved me into his office. There was a crisis in Pittsburgh. It seems that someone pushed the wrong button and we accidentally lost half of the pension investments for Big Joe's Sausages, Inc. Big Joe was pissed. Harry wanted me to reconstruct the portfolio and then go to Pittsburgh to straighten things out.

"I'd love to help," I said. "Unfortunately tonight is my third anniversary and Mike still has not forgiven me for last year. Remember, last year on my anniversary I was in Cleveland helping with Petro Pollution Products."

Harry was breathing deeply and his face was purple. I thought he might blow up and float around the ceiling like a helium balloon or maybe spontaneously combust.

"I'm sure you can see that it's just impossible tonight," I said.

Harry did not see it. He grabbed my right arm. I pulled away. He kept my right arm, sent it to Pittsburgh where it did not adequately appease Big Joe so he ground it up and shot it through the sausage link machine.

I went home to make dinner for Mike -- a special dinner for our anniversary. Unfortunately I could not cook without arms so I ordered Chinese. Mike was angry that I did not bother to cook -- after all I had promised to make my special Lobster Neuberg -- but it must have been the MSG which caused him to bite my head off. Or maybe he was still sore about last year. When he calmed down he grabbed my body and took it to bed.

My head rolled around on the table until Bruno, our German Shepherd, got agitated and jumped up on his hind legs. He pushed my head off the table with his cold, wet nose. He batted me around for a while then left me in the living room. I turned on the television with my tongue; lucky Mike left the remote on the floor. I watched until I forgot about my predicament. So my left arm was on a shopping spree with Janie and my right arm was ground up into sausage and my husband did not notice that I was falling apart. So what if I was coming to pieces?

On TV aliens were landing, people were yelling at each other, a young woman tried to look sexy while she smiled and choked on a greasy burger, a six year old beauty queen strutted down a runway, over and over, images captured before she was murdered.

It was so sad that I started to cry. I floated in my tears and evaporated. I saw the living room; Bruno was licking my cheek and gnawing on my ear. The walls disappeared and I saw Mike sprawled across my chest. I let go of my house. I could see my office. It was late, the night shift was there; hopefully not pushing any buttons. I saw Janie across town yelling at her husband, waving dresses in his face. Price tags fluttered in the air. My left arm was on the sofa.

I was above everything, bathed in silence. The heat of distant stars throbbed through the air lifting me higher until the people below looked like ants; silly little bugs dashing around. Across the ground ant armies streamed out and clashed with other ant armies maybe because they smelled different or were a different color. Who really knows why they attacked each other. It is so hard to tell with ants.

As I moved further away, the ant people disappeared. I was surrounded by cold and darkness. Then I felt the presence of others; people like me who got pulled apart. Warm fingers caressed me. I reached out to these others and slowly, as we joined together, a speck of light shone on the horizon. My spirit warmed and I laughed for no reason as we drifted through vastness towards a growing brilliance.