A Penny's Worth (4 page)

They all apeared to be waiting to see
what she would do, or say, next.

Amber broke the silence, of course. She
couldn’t help it. Her voice was steely: “I really don’t think it’s any of your
business to critique how I conduct myself.”

Penny leaned against the kitchen sink,
folded her arms, and replied, “You’re right Amber, only you should have the
right to say what you think.” Blanking Amber—who was evidently building up to a
big retort—she said to her mother, “I’m not staying at a job just because it’s
easy. I’d appreciate it if you would keep all your opinions to yourselves. I
need support, not advice.”

Pulling Winston closer, she stood up,
picked up her pocketbook and slung it over her shoulder. Suddenly, Penny looked
upon her family like her worst nightmare. They didn’t care that she had no
friends, or a husband, and a home of her own. They didn’t give a hoot they she
had no children drawing fire engines on the kitchen floor. This realization
saddened her. If they really cared, they would be applauding her decision to reach
for something better, instead of trying to tear her down and place fear in her
heart.

She looked down at Winston who was calmly
eating a yellow crayon. “Winston, we’re going home.”

“Oh come on,” Louis pleaded. “Don’t be so
sensitive. What’s going on with you lately? You haven’t been yourself. We just
think you have a good thing going and we don’t want to see you spoil it.”

Dolores shook
her head in agreement. “You
know Penny. She overreacts with everything. You owe Amber an apology, missy.”

“Bye,” Penny said abruptly. She picked up
Winston. Clumps of yellow crayon had stuck to his mouth and whiskers. She
brushed them away with short, sharp motions like an angry mother peeling
potatoes. She couldn’t wait to escape.

Arriving back home, she slammed the door behind her. She
rummaged around in the freezer, hoping to find at least one hot pocket left for
dinner. Her search was in vain.

Sitting at the kitchen table, she
realized that hope was still residing in her heart. It was up to her to find
happiness. No-one was going to hand it to her on a silver platter. She thought
to herself: And I have to find somebody to love me; I need sex too. Time is
running out.

Waking up the next morning, her foul mood had returned.
She realised it never really went away. The first thing she thought of when she
jumped out of bed and into another cold shower was that conversation with her
family. She would never get used to their negativity.

She realised long ago that her family had
no confidence in her; therefore, she had none within herself.

She jumped out of the shower and wrapped
up the morose thoughts just as you wrap yourself inside a fluffy towel. She
walked into the kitchen to make a much needed pot of coffee. Winston and Bob
were standing at attention by their food bowls.

“Good morning guys. Hold on for a
moment.” She stepped through her usual morning rituals, thinking that life
couldn’t be any more mundane then it already was.

There was one bright spot in her day:
Sarah Bentley did not meet up with her that morning. Now able to walk Winston
without Sarah’s boring prattle, she breathed in huge gulps of fresh air as she
ambled down her street. She promised Winston she would find him a new friend.

Arriving at work, she began her usual
routine. Nine year old John Boris came in for his allergy medicine at nine
sharp, Beth’s mother Joan marched in at eleven to administer her daughter’s
daily insulin shot. Gregory Simms usually came in on Thursday mornings
complaining of a headache to avoid his weekly math quiz.

Just as Gregory was leaving, Mr Adams
popped his head into Penny’s office and asked, “How are we today Penny?” Penny’s
eyes were drawn to the top of his head. Not only did he have oily hair, he also
had a bad case of dandruff.

“I hope you’ll be coming to see the band
perform this evening,” he said cheerfully.

She shuffled her feet. “Well, I don’t
know if I can, Mr Adams. Something came up.”

“Came up?” His face fell in
disappointment. “I was expecting the whole faculty to attend, very important
for the morale of the school you know.”

“Yes I do know… Believe me, if I can, I
will. My mom, I think, may need me to take her somewhere.”

“I see,” Mr Adams replied, but she could
tell he didn’t see at all. “I know you’ll try your very best to attend.”

“Of course,” she called after him, as she
thought what a big fat lie that was.

Anway, she thought, listening to his
receding footsteps in the echoing corridor, I’m worried about my own morale, buddy.
Because right now, it’s pretty much non-existent.

As usual, she folded under pressure. Against her better
judgment, she went to see the school band perform their annual Back to School
reception. It was always boring, quite loud, and she cringed as she watched the
parents fight each other for the front seats.

“I’ve been waiting over an hour for these
seats,” Jennifer Suptahs booming voice carried clear across the auditorium like
a half-time score announcement. “You have one hell of a nerve thinking you can
just slip into them when I just turned around to put down my bag.”

Jennifer’s immediate nemesis, a
frizzy-haired mother who had lodged herself into the seat via a strategically
positioned elbow block, retorted, “I’ve been waiting here too, you know. Just
because I went to the bathroom doesn’t mean you can take over the entire front
row with your entourage.”

Penny shook her head slowly as the heated
argument bubbled away unchecked. She knew the situation would escalate if the
two combatants weren’t placated. Mr Adams ran over. As she watched his attempt
to find a compromise—in other words, something that would please neither party—she
realized she’d been watching this same scenario year after year.

The band was still warming up. She
inwardly cringed as she listened to the grating off-key music. She decided
she’d rather be plunged into icy water than endure the rasping clarinets
competing with the discor
dant
scraping of half-tuned
violins. Looking at her watch, she sighed and thought: I only have an hour and
a half and then I can get out of here.

It was then that she saw him. He was
standing by the wall across the auditorium. The man was breathtaking to look
at. His wide shoulders tapered into a small waist and he wore a pair of jeans
and a light blue v neck sweater. He was slightly bow legged; for some reason
Penny always had an attraction to this slight affliction. His hair was rather
long, longer than the current trend, which made him all the more attractive. He
looked to be around forty to forty-five. Penny thought he was the most handsome
man she had ever laid eyes on.

She was so entranced with him, that she
hadn’t realized he had been staring back at her. Oh damn, she thought frantically,
he knows I’m gawking at him.

Quickly turning away, she pretended to
look for something in her pocketbook.

Finally, the assembly was over. Walking quickly toward
the front doors, she turned around and found that the man she’d been gawking at
was right behind her. He was even more beautiful than from afar. Penny actually
felt her knees go weak. With the departing crowd thick in front of them, she
was standing mere inches away.

One of the parents sidled up to Penny in
line and declared loudly, “Weren’t they just amazing? I am so proud of them.”

She placed a fake smile on her face.
“Just unbelievable.”

To her great surprise, another mother
strode up to the man behind her and hugged him. Mrs Simms’ son had leukemia
last fall and everyone had been talking about it. He had been quite sick for a
while, but to everyone’s enormous relief he was now experiencing a full
remission. Arlene Simms greeted this man like they were old friends.

Arlene then grabbed her husband’s arm and
said in excitement, “Look Brad, it’s Dr Bruck. He came to see Craig. Thank you
so much, it will mean so much to him. How are things over at Wayside?” She
laughed loudly and lightly touched Dr Bruck’s arm. Arlene was as awestruck by
this guy as Penny was.

The good doctor laughed too, a deep,
throaty, sexy laugh. It sounded better than she could have imagined. He looked
down at Arlene’s hand on his arm. “I’m happy that the surgery had gone so well
Mrs Simms. As much as we enjoyed spending time with your son, we would rather
not have to see him at the hospital.”

“Yes that is the truth,” Arlene agreed
with a girlish, flirty laugh. “He’s back to being the all-round jock he’s
always been.”

Let’s not get carried away Arlene, Penny
fumed as she watched Arlene bat her eyes shamelessly at this fabulous man. She
looked down at the floor and thought, Who am I kidding? I’d be doing the same
damn thing if I had the chance.

The crowd thinned as Penny neared her
car. She had lost track of Dr Bruck. A light rain was falling and it created a
mist in the air. The fog was so dense she could barely see a foot in front of
her, but her resolve was as clear as ever. She thought back over the
conversation with her family yesterday. How weird: here she was declaring to
her family that she wanted to work in a hospital. Now after seeing Dr Bruck she
was drawn to that dream more than ever. Wayside Hospital may be a place to look
into. She jumped into her car, chuckling. Not in a million years would she ever
admit to Amber that Dr Bruck had been the draw.

Two cars over, Mr Adams stood next to his
Ford Taurus. He looked distracted, rumpled, and sad. He appeared to be stuck in
a rut as well, and she could sense his desire to move on. In her core, she knew
he would never do it. As she watched Mr Adams yawn loudly, she knew that she no
longer had a choice.

She decided she would call Wayside
Hospital tomorrow and try to set up an interview. If they didn’t want her, she
would look elsewhere. She waved at Mr Adams as he scratched his oily head and
pulled up his wrinkled, baggy trousers. She didn’t want anyone who remotely
resembled Mr Adams. She laughed and asked herself: Is that too much to ask?

Penny entered Krasdall’s coffee shop breathing heavily. She
ordered an omelet and began to assemble her resume.

She couldn’t work at home because Bob and
Winston were distracting her. She needed this resume to be so slick, so heavy
with gold-plating that it could break somebody’s foot if they dropped it. This
portfolio would be her ticket to a better future, and a better life.

After the first draft, the completed
resume read pretty much like this:

Penny Marins completed four years of
college at Stony Brook University of New York and is a licensed registered
nurse. She accepted a job at Fernfair and has been there practically her whole
life.

The flimsy resume looked pathetic, she
realized. Try as she might, she couldn’t wrack her brain for anything to fluff
it up. She didn’t like to think about it, but she just didn’t appear very
interesting or substantial on paper. She felt a nervous clench begin to form in
her stomach.

Who the hell is going to hire me with
these credentials? she thought in dismay. What have I been doing for all these
years, sleepwalking? I should have volunteered for Habitat for the Humanities;
I should have helped sick children that lived deep in the jungles of South Africa. But no, she thought in disgust, instead I spent almost half my life filling
out emergency forms at an elementary school.

She took a sip of coffee and rolled her
shoulders to work the kink out of them. She heard a light cough and looked up.
Oh, great. Standing at the counter ordering a Mocha Latte to go was Cousin
Charlene’s best friend Beth Blake. Penny had the perfect nickname for Blake:
Blake
the Flake
. Her bleached blond hair was whiter than usual and her make-up
was heavier than ever. Her lip pencil was applied so thickly that her mouth
looked as if someone had drawn it on, and her heavy brown lipstick was bleeding
right through it onto her upper lip. Penny had a sudden longing to pick up her
napkin and vigorously wipe Beth’s face.

“Oh hi, sweetie, how are you?” Beth’s
voice was high and tinny.

Oh just peachy keen. She smiled up at
Beth, and realized that she despised this woman. “I’m fine, and you? What
brings you to this side of the woods? Are you slumming?”“

“Oh, you’re just so funny. I just happen
to be meeting a friend for sushi at Asian Grill.” Beth smiled sweetly. “Dining
alone?”

Penny sat back just as the waitress
placed her omelet in front of her. She felt a rush of humiliation. “Yes, well,
I had some work to catch up on and I become easily distracted at home because
of Bob and Winston.”

Beth shook her head up and down with faux
understanding. “Oh, are those your children?”

She had a sudden urge to slide under the
table and hide. “No, they would be my dog and cat.”

Beth’s confused look cleared up. “Oh,
yeah, right, I didn’t think you had any kids.” Before Penny could reply, she
snapped her fingers and asked, “Hey, speaking of kids, don’t you baby-sit?”