Today is Monday, today is Monday
Monday, string beans
Tuesday, spaghetti
Wednesday, soup
Thursday, roast beef
Friday, fresh fish
Saturday, chicken
Sunday, ice cream
All you hungry children, we wish the best to you!
Carol started buying the newspapers the day after her sister Sandra died. I just wanted to make a scrapbook, she told everyone, a scrapbook with all her write-ups in it. I don’t know what all the fuss is about. It’s just a few newspapers, after all. And Carol kept them in stacks, so one day when she was ready, she’d make Sandra’s scrapbook.
It started innocently enough, didn’t it? Just stacks of newspapers, sorted by day, then by week, then by month. Everything neat and tidy.
“I’ll just be going out now,” she announced, “to get some oranges for snacks and to see the newsman on the corner. Be right back!” And the papers piled up, very neat and tidy.
But now that Sandra wasn’t living there anymore, Carol bought the magazines too. Not the sports ones or the ones that the kids looked at. I’ll just be picking up those fan magazines. You know, the ones about the Hollywood stars? It’s my collection. I need Tuesday to be complete, after all. And the newsman is very kind. It’s like he knows what I want before I ask him for it.
“Hello?” Carol picked up the phone that sat on top of Tuesday.
“Hello? Is anybody there?” she asked the phone that never rang anymore. Now that Sandra was gone, who would call?
“Hello? Hello?”
And it became a routine. Everyone finds comfort in a routine, she told everyone. I like things neat and tidy. So, next to Tuesday, sat Wednesday. Thursday’s pile stacked up next, neatly. Along with a few oranges for snacks.
And there were codes too. “All you hungry children, I wish the best to you!” On Monday, Carol shopped for string beans. Monday’s paper, Monday’s Hollywood stars, Monday’s string beans and can after can of beans came into the house to take its place. Just in case, there were cans of string beans. Carol wouldn’t want to go hungry. On Tuesday, spaghetti. Cans of spaghetti, all alike, stacked in piles next to the Tuesday papers, and so on to make the week. The Sunday ice cream piled up in the freezer so Carol phoned in another freezer, just in case, and she filled it up too, piling the Sunday papers and the Sunday magazines right next to it.
Then Carol started getting confused. Once the week was done, where could she put the next Monday if not in the pile of last Monday’s things? Everything neat and tidy, Monday must go with Monday. After a few months, Carol’s neat day piles stacked up to the top of her couch and slowly, so slowly she barely noticed, everything she had when Sandy was still there was consumed, swallowed up, just gone now under the piles of the days of the week. So she made a path and the path was neat and tidy too. It was wide at first, then smaller and smaller as it snaked down the hall, through the kitchen, into the dining room, and ended in the double parlor next to the new freezer.
But it didn’t stop there. The path was leading Carol now, pulling her along, so she used the extra sections in her Sunday papers to cover up the windows. This was a comfort to her. They were starting to watch. They were always looking in, judging her. But once the papers were up and the lights were on, they all went away.
The money held out, the newsman had every day’s purchases ready for her, the paper hung neatly against the windows, Monday stacked on Monday, and she couldn’t see them looking in anymore. But Carol wasn’t feeling well and she worried she might be dying like Sandra. So, on Thursday, she decided to stop by the drugstore on her way to the newsman. She looked both ways and crossed the street at the corner. But something tugged at her arm suddenly and wouldn’t let go. Carol argued, please let me go, I have to get drugs, or I’ll die.
And it was too late. Sandra pulled her away and Carol was gone.
For the next three weeks, the building people pulled apart Carol’s neat and tidy piles of days. They didn’t know to start with Monday and they pulled and dragged willy-nilly until all her days were gone from her hall and her kitchen and her dining room, all the way into her double parlor where they found her freezer.
When they were done, the real estate people moved in to stage it for the sale. Someone said it was a mysterious apartment, but it wasn’t really.
Now, it was just neat and tidy.
The Backpack Press 