The Understory (4 page)

And like most mornings, Story’s Monday arrived like an unwanted dream, abrupt and loaded with bad omens. She tiptoed out of Martin Baxter’s house in the dark, wee hours to avoid getting caught, but barely made it to her car without being noticed.

When she finally got there, the streetlamp highlighted a bright yellow parking ticket jutting out from under the windshield wipers—yet another reminder that no matter where she went, she was an interloper.

Before going to work, she stopped back at her own house to shower, change clothes, and work on Twenty-Nine Down, which had been giving her trouble. Thanks to a quirky home décor company, the ten-foot wall in Story’s dining room was covered with special-order wallpaper printed up as a life-sized crossword puzzle. Each time Story used the chunky black marker to fill in an answer, literally scribbling on the wall, she giggled, knowing her mother would scoff at such uncivilized behavior.

Twenty-nine, as it happened, was also her age. She didn’t dwell on that. In fact, she’d forgotten her birthday for the last three years in a row, remembering it only after the fact, when she was writing a check or looking at a calendar. But she was pushing thirty, the age at which you should have accomplished something in your life. Unfortunately, she could think of nothing she’d done thus far that could be considered important.

It’ll last for days.
Four letters. She stared at the four empty boxes awaiting letters. After a few seconds, it came to her.
Duh. WEEK.
She was happy she hadn’t called upon the word she sometimes conjured up when she needed a little help in reaching a goal. “Abracadabra,” she muttered under her breath.
Good thing I’m not counting on you.

Ever since she was a little girl, Story Easton had secretly relied on her special word, a word that her mother thought was complete hogwash. And Story figured her mother was probably right, but it didn’t stop her from trying it out on occasion. For Story, the Aramaic definition of “abracadabra”—
I create as I speak—
had given her a sense of hope, as it was not only a reference to God creating the universe, but a promise that if you speak it, it shall be so. But during her lifetime, in the hundreds of times she’d used the word in hope of a real, magical result, it had failed her. Of course.

Story walked out of her humble bungalow, one she was renting because she refused to accept down payment money from her mother, who wanted Story to leave municipal Phoenix for a more acceptable locale, like Deer Run or Glendale. She walked through her brown and neglected yard to her brown and neglected hand-me-down Volvo.

If Story could at least pretend not to be disappointed in disappointment, her mother could not—Story was, indeed, a colossal disappointment to her mother, who was successful to an embarrassing degree. A year ago, in a futile attempt to please her, Story put her English major to “good use” and took a job as a writer. Sort of. She took a job writing annoying, well-wishing prose and verse (if you could even call it that) for Special Occasions, a greeting card conglomerate responsible for eighty percent of the market’s need for optimism at any cost.

After arriving at work on that Monday morning, she assumed her usual position—that of a hostage in a dismal cubicle—and decided today was the day. She’d endured several months of spewing out bad, rhyming poetry and slinging empty slogans, and she wanted to design more honest cards. So on that Monday, she proposed her new greeting card line,
Life’s a Crapshoot
the very spirit of which was cheeky and irreverent. Story pitched her innovative idea to her boss, Ivy Powers, when Ivy stopped by Story’s cubicle.

Ivy loved having a boss-worthy salary, but hated being called
boss
because she wanted people to like her. Story called her
boss
every chance she could get, because it was fun.

On that Monday, Story explained how her new card line would appeal to realists, but Ivy Powers, always stoic and obsessed with the bottom line, stood in the cubicle doorway and retorted, “Realists don’t buy cards.”

In an effort to convince her that real life was no fairy tale, Story wheeled her chair to Ivy’s side and handed her the first installment of the sassy new series. Ivy stared at the front of the card, which featured a picture of a little yellow chick, dirty and covered with hatchling droppings, and the words,
A Little Birdie Told Me Your Life’s in the Crapper . . .

And when Ivy opened the card, it said,
Don’t worry. “Life is only a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Ivy Powers stared at Story, and let out an irritated sigh.

Story chewed the last bit of her blueberry bagel and said, “It’s Shakespeare, Boss.”

“It’s depressing.” Ivy stared her down. “And don’t call me that,” she said, still staring. “Please.” And then Story heard Ivy speak again. “Such ugly words,” she mumbled, “from such pretty lips.”

Though Ivy had turned down the
Life’s A Craphshoot
series, Story knew someone in the printing department (a lady who had handed Story toilet paper from the third stall a couple of weeks prior), and so, unbeknownst to her boss, Story had already had each card in her ten-card series printed up with crisp, matching envelopes, and decided to carry them with her as a small victory, proof that
sticking it to the man
(or woman) provided savory retribution.

Before exiting the cubicle, Ivy asked, with folded arms and a forced Monday morning smile, “How’s the
Grief and Loss
series coming along?”

“It’s hilarious, Boss,” Story said. “Know anything that rhymes with
condolences
?”

“Less than a week,” Ivy reminded her as she waved her makeshift wand—a bright yellow happy face on a stick—and made her way toward her next victim. Ivy often got nervous when deadlines drew near, but Story knew it didn’t matter if she had one week or three months—she was beginning to take less and less pleasure in other people’s grief.

The moment Ivy left, the phone rang, and as soon as Story picked it up, the other authority figure in Story’s life said, “Darling, is this a bad time?”

“Actually, Mom, I’m kind of in the middle—”

“Great. Look, I expect you to . . .” She stopped herself and rephrased, but not before a long, irritated sigh. “I mean, I’d really love it if you could attend my gala party this Wednesday.”

Story wanted to point out that using both “gala” and “party” was redundant, but remembering that her mother thrived on being redundant, she decided to let it go.

After a pause, Beverly Easton, the woman who gave birth to Story, said, “You
do
remember about the anniversary party, right?”

“Of course, Mom. It’s the anniversary of you embracing your . . . greatness. What’s it been? Fifteen years?” And after a snicker, she added, “Forever?”

But Story knew her mother was talking about another anniversary. Her mother’s twenty-year-old company, Socra-Tots®, a little operation once run out of Beverly’s basement, had become a household name, the end-all-be-all of early childhood educational products. The company, which was now a mega-corporation, peddled books, DVDs, CDs, and toys, and was rooted in finding clear, concise answers to lofty questions by way of Socrates himself. All products employed the Socratic Method, a model which focused on asking sharp, pointed questions like “What do you mean by that?” and “How do you know?” to promote discussion and debate.

“What do you mean by that?” Story’s mother asked, as she had so many times before. Silence filled the next five seconds, but Story continued to conjure up the questions she’d heard since childhood.
What do you mean by “The doggie is sad”? How do you know the zebra is black and white? What makes you think the sun is hot?

“Look, Mom, I’m not sure it’s a good idea I come. I’m hardly the poster child for what a Socra-Tot should be when she grows up.”

Calmly, her mother said, “How do you
know
?”

“Ugh!”

“Okay, no more questions,” her mother promised. “Okay?”

“That’s a question.”

Another sigh. “How will it look if my only daughter doesn’t show up to help me celebrate my life’s greatest achievement?”

So there it was, finally, and Story laughed. “You finally said it,” she said.

“That didn’t come out right.” But Beverly Easton’s nerves got the best of her and she retreated to her comfort zone. “What did you mean by that?” she asked, and for good measure threw in, “And how do you
know
?”

“I
know
, Mom,” Story sighed, “because I’ve always known.”

It was true. In Story’s eyes, Beverly Easton had always been disenchanted with her only child. Story had spent her childhood competing for the role of main character in her own mother’s life, only to find herself overshadowed by grander, nobler protagonists. In fact, Story’s mother had given her daughter the name
Story
in the hope of raising an interesting child, a child who would make a lasting impression, but if Story’s life paralleled a narrative, her plotline might as well have been a flat line, devoid of rising action and suspense. And what was the theme of this
Story
? When you are expected to be extraordinary, and you turn out a disaster, you will cause chronic disappointment.

“What, precisely, have I achieved through you?” Beverly Easton mumbled.

Annoyed, Story hoped her mother would recant, change her mind, or at least lie, but Beverly Easton struck again, like a shark, always circling back for another bite. Story recalled another impressive fish:
The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail.
She wondered how Peter Benchley could have written a whole novel about her mother without having met her.

But when Beverly Easton came back for a second strike, it seemed as though she was trying to prod Story on—to greatness, to completion, to humiliation, perhaps. “You’ve never succeeded at one thing in your life. Seriously, name one thing that you’ve accomplished, that
meant
anything.“ Beverly paused only long enough to take a breath, as if there was a realization Story needed to make for herself. “Sure as the sun will shine tomorrow, you will have not accomplished—a thing.”

After a moment of silence, Story exhaled, then mumbled, “The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.”

“You think I don’t recognize that?” Beverly said, adding, after a cackle, “Samuel Beckett. I loaned you the book, darling. The rest of the world isn’t quite as stupid as you like to think.” She let out one, long controlled breath. “Another first line from the girl who focuses on
attempting
things rather than
achieving.
Bet you don’t know the last line.”

Hating that her mother, once again, was right, Story took a guess. “THE END!” she yelled into the receiver. When Story slammed the phone down, she considered the dial tone as much success as she could muster.

Story had often thought that each one of us, like Russian nesting dolls, has layers of stories inside. Her deepest layer’s story had been
Curious George;
after hearing it at four, she longed for the man in the yellow hat to whisk her away for wacky adventures. Later,
Little Women
established another—oh, how she wanted to trade in being a little girl for being a little woman. And in college, Kate Chopin’s
The Awakening
created yet another layer, showing her why someone might walk straight into the ocean and keep going until she found herself enveloped by deep, dark waters.

It was a fact that Story had failed at writing her own great American novel. Instead, she peddled commercial, spoon-fed slogans, which were far from literary and even farther from truth. So, in addition to knowing she was a failed novelist, she also knew she mass-produced shit for a living. But what she didn’t know was that she was a fig fruit. It’s true—the parallels are uncanny. In the rainforest, the fig fruit is a staple of almost every forest creature, but the fruit contains a laxative (which is highly acidic) that causes the seed to pass rapidly through an animal’s gut. Thus, the animals act as seed dispersers. Story Easton and the fig fruit both used shit as a propagation method. Could a seed of hope survive a swim in a pool of poop? Special Occasions and Ivy Powers were banking on it.

Following a long afternoon of searching for upbeat sayings to adorn sympathy cards, the afternoon sun began its descent, and Story Easton began her own downward spiral into other people’s dark sides. She left work, grabbed a burger, and headed home to tackle Ten Across,
Does the Wright thing.
Halfway through her glass of chardonnay, it came to her.
Flies.
Two correct answers in one day was a new record.
Good omen?
Knowing it was the
Wright
thing to do, she initially resisted the compulsion to be someone else, but the longing overpowered her, and after changing her clothes, she soon found herself in her car, driving around, watching the sun retire. And once again, she searched for something, or someone, who would make her forget who she was.