© Randal W. O’Rourke
Lyle Lowe stood
leaning over the end table, eyes leveled in the general direction of the
bedroom, waiting. Shortly after he
began dating Beverly, about 2 months prior, the limits of Lyle's patience had been
continually tested. His position as a
research assistant in the physics department at the university provided him
with more than his share of free time, and the countless hours formerly wasted
watching Partridge Family reruns and rereading old Dave Barry articles could
now be spent waiting for Beverly.
Lyle
had grown well acquainted with the large living room of the studio apartment
where Beverly taught macramé and gave ventriloquism lessons in order to be at
home more with her 11 year old daughter, Griselda. Griselda had been christened after one of her mother's favorite
movie characters. Not in any kind of
religious ceremony, but, more like one would launch a ship, when Beverly
tripped and broke her beer bottle against the base of her daughter's bassinet
during a late showing of "The Court Jester" starring Danny Kaye. Griselda still didn't know she was named
after the witch.
Growing
restless with the knowledge that their zoo visit was being decimated
exponentially Lyle began to mutter to himself absent-mindedly. At the precise moment that Beverly's head
appeared in the bedroom doorway, lips rigid and slightly parted, the floor lamp
in the far corner called out almost casually,"Jyust a ninit! Ee're alnost
leady!" Lyle was devastated now to
realize that not only would time restraints prohibit a stroll through the
reptile gardens, but, tragically, Beverly's principal source of light had
developed a speech impediment.
As
Lyle could testify, however, a closer inspection of the apartment would leave
the lamp's infirmity seeming rather mundane.
The large braided rug in the center of the expansive front room had been
hand made from the hair of eleven generations of ancestors by Beverly's
grandmother on her father's side; Grandma Everly. For the most obvious reason Beverly Everly began to dream of her
wedding day from the time she started public school. During that eternity between the ages of seven and eighteen her
classmates had seen to it with their thoughtless remarks that Beverly's dream
didn't die. Even a hyphenated name she
felt would relieve some of the torture.
In her second year at Larry's College of Hair styling and the Dramatic
Arts in Southern Colorado she found what she believed to be her savior and soul
mate in a small coffee shop on Main Street that doubled as the campus for
LCHDASC. Before the endorphin flow had
slowed to a reasonable level and her synapses had ceased their random
misfiring, Beverly had married and cross-pollinated with Jacob Brothers; poet,
actor and master of the spiral perm.
The introduction of responsibility into this equation lead to the
inevitable disintegration of the union and Jacob did the honorable thing by
dying in a head on collision with a Kenworth hauling a trailer full of frozen
French fries when their lovely daughter was only two months old. Left with a fair insurance settlement and a
little girl whose name sounded like a troupe of acrobats, Beverly
Everly-Brothers had abandoned almost everything that reminded her of her old
life and relocated to Denver. Refusing
to allow the birth of her precious Griselda to be reduced to the level of a
burden, a mistake, or a lesson to be learned, she instead had kept the rug as a
symbol of how apparently beautiful and ordinary incidents can be intricately
woven from the most bizarre circumstances; and vice versa. And it kept that one scratchy coffee table
leg from marring the hardwood floor.
Suspended
from the ceiling in the alcove near the coat closet were literally hundreds of
macramé plant hangers in various stages of production. Stray tendrils of gray and brown yarn and
hemp filled the alcove. The effect was
similar to that of a wool rain forest or a burlap jungle. Aside from the fact that he had been dead
for some time, it wouldn't have been out of place to see Johnny Weismuller
swing into the living room in a loincloth and house slippers. It's unwise for anyone to go barefoot on a
hardwood floor.
Farther
down the wall toward the kitchen lay about thirty Jerry Mahoney dolls in a
jumbled heap right up next to the mop board, eerily resembling a miniature
Auschwitz for ventriloquist dummies.
The kitchen itself was an exact replica of a photograph from the March
'53 issue of Better Homes & Gardens accompanying
an article entitled "Formica: Fad
or Future?". All the appliances
were red.
Surveying
the entire scene from a mantel on the wall opposite the macramé jungle was an
antique Ansonia clock which, when wound, ran backwards and chimed six o'clock
every fifteen minutes. The old gypsy
woman who sold Beverly the ancient timepiece had told her that if she let it
wind down bad luck would surely follow.
Beverly wasn't particularly superstitious but kept the clock wound,
nonetheless, because she simply preferred not to tempt Fate unless she felt she
had something to offer which she might be willing to spare.
Below
the mantel was an abstract painting of a fireplace that actually looked more
like a relief map of Uruguay. The
bedrooms were behind this wall and were nothing out of the ordinary.
Beverly's
more generous and diplomatic friends called her decor
"eclectic". Others flatly
refused to set foot back in the apartment.
When
Beverly and Griselda finally emerged from the back room Lyle had settled
himself into the huge scratching post, which bore a remarkable resemblance to a
sofa, belonging to Griselda's cat, Phoebe.
Phoebe had assumed ownership of the piece of furniture on his first day
in his new home three years ago. After
her daughter had saddled their tomcat, who had also recently suffered the indignity
of having been neutered, with the name Phoebe, Beverly didn't have the heart to
have him declawed. Phoebe had worked
out his gender and anger issues on the couch.
Globally, therapeutic furniture for pets would never really catch on,
but Phoebe seemed pretty relaxed.