Unkempt, Interrupted
She walks into the coffee shop disheveled and somewhat scatterbrained. She missed a button on her black overcoat, so the collar covers the left side of her head, and her crooked knit hat covers the right. There are papers stuffed in a folder that’s billowing from the top of her ratty and beige yarn purse. The wooden handle keeps sliding from the crook of her forearm to her wrist while she fumbles through the purse’s clicky contents for some cash. After spilling each individual item onto the floor as least once, she pulls out a wadded-up fiver, removes lint and what appears to be half a stick of Double Mint from the currency, and hands it to the Goth chick behind the counter. She then stumbles through her order, her fingers nervously fumbling about her lips as she speaks. She makes several choices only to quickly take them back. The Goth chick’s sneer grows visibly larger. Finally, she settles on a whole-wheat bagel with veggie cream cheese and cinnamon chai. Minutes later, our girl takes the plated snack, places it precariously atop her beverage, and pushes her way through the crowded café to a seat in the corner.
Let’s name her Wendy.
Wendy hovers over her bagel like a small animal in the wild protecting its fresh kill. She picks off small pieces and swiftly pops them in her mouth, looking up each time to scan the room for potential poachers. Her stringy brown hair is medium length. Thin strands crowd her face as she eats. She wears no makeup to hide her pimples and the bags under her eyes. Her wire-rim glasses are pitted, scratched and dirty. They fall crooked on her face as a result of having only one fully intact arm.
Wendy’s fingers are long, thin and boney, with no rings and dirty fingernails. She’s wearing a gray men’s flannel shirt over a faded yellow-and-blue-striped sweater. Her thin, black linen skirt covers a pair of tattered jeans that end in busted Birkenstock sandals and pilled wool socks.
Suddenly, Wendy’s phone rings — an anti-climactic “ring” ring tone. That’s when, from the depths of her hippy yarn bag, there appears the biggest cell phone I’ve ever seen. It’s probably eight inches long and four inches thick, held together with a duct/masking tape combo. I’m surprised she doesn’t have a huge, melon-shaped tumor on her head from using what is clearly the very first cellular phone.
She answers this thing, and it’s her mother. I know because Wendy’s side of the conversation consists almost entirely of the same repeated retort: “No,Mother…”
I think her mom’s mad. She’s mad at Wendy’s lot in life. Wendy has never met a man to marry. She lives with eight cats in a fifth floor walk-up that no one could call “spacious” without sounding sarcastic. There are layers of clothes and overdue bills atop every inch of futon and lawn chair in the apartment. There’s a circa-1973 TV in the corner with broken dials and rabbit ears covered in tin foil. In the kitchen is a coffee percolator and a burnt-out toaster oven. A Scooby-Doo Chia head sits in the kitchen window. The cupboards are empty save for a few soap-clouded glasses and a single plate and bowl. Every cabinet door has been left wide open.
The refrigerator contains a bottle of mustard, an empty butter dish, and a beer. There’s a tall and sprawling stack of take-out menus on the counter. On the floor are eight cat bowls, each with a name painted on the side –the names of all Seven Dwarfs, and Steve. Steve, her first cat, is named after Wendy’s favorite uncle. “Only Uncle Steve understands me,” she would say during her disgruntled adolescence.
There are no paintings on the walls, just a few curled 3×5 photos stuck with tape. Most are pictures of Mom and Uncle Steve, and one is of Wendy holding three obviously annoyed cats. Her bedroom consists of more clothing piles. Each bureau drawer is stuck open, with clumps of socks and underwear stuffed in and around each drawer. Her bed looks like it’s never been made. On it sits a displaced stack of work documents and folders piled on an old Apple laptop.
Wendy graduated with a major in social work and a minor in accounting, the latter according to a deal with her mom that she get a “real” degree to go along with the “useless” one. (Mother paid her way, so she reluctantly agreed.) Her first job out of college was head teller for a large bank. After several run-ins with her boss, then a brief affair with her boss’ husband, Wendy followed her dream and opened a resource center and soup kitchen for wayward souls. “The dirty street people are not your concern,” Mother often exclaims. “Marrying an orthopedist and giving me clean and well-dressed grandchildren is.” Mother wishes Wendy was more like her successful, married brother. He’s a vice president of a New York brokerage firm. His name is Charles, and he has a little boy named Rock and a girl named Magnolia. They live in a posh, four-bedroom condo on the Upper East Side, and summer in the Hamptons.
The forlorn look on Wendy’s face tells me this nagging is the gist of today’s cell phone conversation. Then there’s a break in the argument — Mother has just put Uncle Steve on the phone. Wendy, overcome with emotion (or the toxic cancer waves from her military-issue BIVWAC phone), tells Uncle Steve how Mother is cutting her deep with her mean words. Uncle Steve, who has a talent for calming irrational behavior in seconds, pulls out the classic and nearly 100-percent-effective tantrum-ender: “But, are you happy, sweetheart?” Wendy, now using what was once a Rolling Stones Farewell Tour t-shirt to wipe her nose, let’s out a meek “yes.” There is some inaudible banter, followed by an “I love you, too.” A half smile, a sniffle and a giggle later, Wendy’s cancerous phone call is over.
Our girl now gathers herself in a uncoordinated, almost spastic fashion, throwing her tattered, unraveling yarn purse over her shoulder. In so doing, she knocks the guy sitting next to her in the back of the head, causing him to smash his teeth on his cup. Wendy, noticing none of this, pushes back through the crowd and heads out into the snowy afternoon with a smile on her face and a napkin stuck to her backside.
Rock on, Wendilynn… Rock on.
