Maggie Lawson

ALONE WITH A BORROWED PUNCHBOWL

A blur, now, it was just another potluck among friends. Suzanne had left her punchbowl at my house maybe a year—a year and a half ago—well before her husband fell ill. He finally died last month, around Thanksgiving. It was shortly thereafter my husband had flipped out in a maniacal manic episode. Was that horror scene just last month, too? I know the shit hit the proverbial fan on October 17th.

This punchbowl was a good size, probably 20” across, but who’s measuring? It was not fancy or glass, just utilitarian plastic. The punchbowl was before. I’m figuring out “the after”.

Her husband had finally died. “They” said she didn’t kill him, but I knew she’d wanted to. He’d become sick, sick with a disease that was terminal. He was already an angry, self-centered man, and while disabled he’d treated her even worse than he had for most of their marriage. She’d planned to leave him when the kids left. They left. Then, on their departing heels, the diagnosis. Crap. It took three more years out of her life to nurse him and watch the miserable bastard die.

My husband had finally left us. The last few years were Hell. He was a clergyman, and he had open affairs he naively masked as providing therapy. We had two little ones, and, of course, I kept trying to “fix it” whatever that means. I was an emotional zombie. He finally blew out and left, presumably to run away with the wife of a couple he’d married last Spring. She reneged at the last minute, not wanting to leave her mother. Her mother called me and asked me what was going on. I hung up on her. You can’t make this shit up. All I knew, deep down, was that our in-resident poltergeist had gone with him. My relief was palpable.

Suzanne got so much sympathy, and food, poor widow. She milked it. She deserved it. Bring on the sympathy. She could summon convincing tears with the mention of his name. I knew they were actually tears of relief.

All I got were shock waves, not even food. There were no words. I think his sudden leaving was too real, shattering their Hollywood impression of ideal marriages. No one could have guessed. I’d played the dutiful wife so well. I was a “minister’s wife, thank you very much. I had a role to play. How could I have told anyone, anyway. Not in those days. He’d left his congregation, too. I backed away, giving them a chance to regroup. I was on shaky ground. No sympathy; no food. Death, they understood, not insanity and abandonment.

Suzanne got it, though, and we decided to see a comedy, together. Shake it off. Breathe. It was my first venture out in public, but we’d just go in the dark theatre, and no one would look at me, then avert their eyes as if they hadn’t ventured a pathetic glimpse. I knew they had no words for what had happened to me.

The punch bowl! I’d return it. It’d been months.

Popcorn is so expensive, there. I’d fill the punchbowl with popcorn, cover it with tinfoil, invert it on my belly, and zip up my coat! No one would know.

I rigged it up in the parking lot and walked, well more like waddled, into the theatre and met her in the lobby. It was just two minutes until the show started. It’d be quick. She did a quick askance look at me, and I whispered my plan. She laughed.

We got the tickets and started to #3 theater when a loud announcement blared that our film had been delayed 15 minutes, and to wait in the lobby.

Oh-kay.

This was not my plan. I paced uncomfortably for a while, but my “pregnant” arched-back posture was straining my back. Incognito was my plan, not exposure. Then I sat on a bench. Fifteen minutes felt like hours. That was worse. It’d be over in a few minutes, right. I tried some deep breathing but could only inhale the smell of the warm popcorn and butter. Could others, too? Was my ruse up? I began to perspire.

I desperately fought the urge to unzip. It was warm in there. I tried not to wiggle.  I wanted to cry I was so uncomfortable. I shut my eyes. When I opened them, I was looking down. I saw a pair of nice, leather, men’s shoes facing me. Slowly, I looked up to find Jackson, a clergyman acquaintance of my husband’s standing there, looking at me. He looked so sad. Before I could say anything, he said, “OH, Maggie, I heard it was bad, but I didn’t know it was THIS bad, and at Christmas!” Smiling reassuringly, I now began to unzip my jacket, “No, no, no…Jackson, it’s just popcorn.” I could tell he thought I’d totally lost it. “Maggie! Zip up, NOW!”

Just then, the announcement said we could go in, and we must have, but I laugh whenever I think of popcorn and the movies. Poor Jackson. He’ll never know, that other than Suzanne, he was the first to care.