Heather Buyce-Vasquez
Lyllian Seattle, 2017
“Hope is a Thing with Feathers That Perches in the Soul” ~ Emily Dickinson
There is a clamoring as plates are passed around. Michael has made one of his famous chicken salads filled with lots of colorful vegetables and pre-cooked shredded chicken. The kind that makes Lyllian cringe when the small bag rings up at the check stand. The endless debate about expensive premade versus cheaper frozen needing a thaw now soggy. A favorite of hers and Michael’s.
There is always a nice soft loaf of some good bread to go with it and the inevitable argument with both girls on bread seconds before the salad is all eaten. Which in turn means Lyllian herself must wait on bread as well in order to avoid the accusatory yells and eye rolls from Michael.
This is just where she finds herself that evening after a long long day of endless phone calls and medical record numbers, clacking on keyboards and fax machine cussing. She’d eked out a few paragraphs of writing much to her surprise but still felt distracted and a bit underwater.
She realized Michael had asked her a question and the girls were looking at her and noisily slurping salad. She blinked.
“What?”
“Just asking about your day is all love.” Michael raises an eyebrow and offers her the pepper he knows she will reach for anyway because she loves pepper.
She scrambles to recall her day. Dumb. Muddled. She still has yet to tell Michael about the blackouts and she also has yet to process the incident with her mother. When was that? It’s as if everything but her seems to be in fast forward. Or perhaps she is simply in slow motion.
Her mother had left her a couple messages this week asking if she wanted to go to coffee and Lyllian had yet to respond which is unlike her. Was she frightened of what her mother might say?
One of Lyllian’s many OCD pet peeve face palm quirks is her insistence that it is the ultimate kick in the teeth to not acknowledge an email. Having been an “office bee” for the past several years and spending most of her pathetic career CCing and BCCing and forwarding and attaching the very idea that an email would be ignored for any length of time is tantamount to leaving the break room microwave on a pre-set with 37 more seconds to go, or borrowing someone’s pen off their desk only to make off with it, or forwarding emails without editing out the conjecture and sarcasm meant for your eyes only, or reading over a co-worker’s shoulder a story in the writing….
“The day the day…” she says sprinkling liberal amounts of pepper over her salad, “Good. The usual. Anyone want more bread?” she asks smiling and jamming a large slice into her mouth knowing full well there is over half a salad still on her plate.
She can tell from the set of his jaw that he is annoyed. The girls both jump at the bread as if it’s plated in gold. Her jaw though, is set right back. She’d noticed all through dinner and frankly, that week, that Michael had been watching her. She’d taken note of how his eyes had followed her adding more blue cheese salad dressing to her salad. He, of course, rarely uses dressing and if he does it’s that foofoo vinaigrette stuff. Perhaps she is imagining it. Perhaps not. All she did know was that sometimes the enormity of the differences between them astounded her.
Soon after Vivienne kept them all entertained with stories of what if’s – what if the hare had won and not the tortoise. Or if Dorothy had simply used the ruby slippers in the first place.
It was later and Lyllian was in their room folding clothes and wrestling with the plastic hangers that she paused as she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror that hung over the low smooth brown dresser they shared.
Her face was pale as it always was, her cheeks rosy as they always were. She did not inherit her father’s caramel skin, instead she got her mother’s creamy complexion. Her hair was long, well past her shoulders and a mass of dark brown curls. Lately she had noticed a few very bright fine strands of silver. Especially around her temples. She absently thought about how she wished she had auburn hair and the many times she’d attempted to color it as such only to have it come out just the same – dark brown. Faint red streaks visible only in the brightest sunlight imaginable and only if she stood just so.
And so it went, her always wishing she was different than she is. From her small hands and small feet to her short stature and eyes the color or moss in the deep forest. She had never been a slender girl but years of two children and a fondness for doughnuts, lattes, and cheeseburgers had left their mark. She was not fat really. Not really. Just plump. Pleasantly so she supposed. Healthy her doctor said. Sexy her husband said. She said fat.
And that is why, that evening after the salad and bread incident she found herself recalling the way Michael had watched her. Had he? She let her hands run over her hips and around her belly. Her eyes felt dark and damp.
Michael was a nice man. He was never intentionally cruel to her or anyone really. The idea that he may have noticed her slowly softening self and the fact that her favorite outfit any more was her soft pajama bottoms and an old Soundgarden T-shirt bothered her. It bothered her quite a lot.
And to boot the graphic dreams and blackouts were becoming more frequent. Long periods of nothingness and no memory. Scenes and feelings so tangible she could feel them in her hands. Hands that were hers but not hers. She had still not talked to Michael about it though she knew he’d want to know and want to fix it. And she still needed to talk to her mother. Rose’s odd comments that time in the front garden still left Lyllian feeling upset and uncertain. Not relieved that perhaps there was an explanation. But fearful, her stomach knotted uncomfortably. Her fat little stomach.