Deciding to Eat
Thoughtfully
in the in-between-time of a Monday and a Tuesday, she wakes from a broken sleep
to eat a green apple. It’s been her habit ever since summer days fell way to
autumn nights, and it keeps her grounded. They’re not the same as the ones she
could get back home, but an apple is an apple, and even if it tastes different,
the ritual is the same. Pulling the teak cutting board from her wire shelf,
Audra’s green PT t-shirt left over from basic catches on the edge and rips. She
mutters, cursing the darkness and her clumsiness. Everyone’s always been after
her to slow down. But there’s always too much to do, too many obligations to
fill and people to please that she’s never really mastered how to make that
happen.
The shirt is one of her last ones, left from that long thought out decision
she’d made after the call that changed her life. Seems like a lifetime ago, but
it’s only been three years that she’s been in, and she’s just renewed her
contract for another four. This life isn’t what she expected, but the structure
and clear expectations suit her. There’s little wondering what others want from
her; it’s all spelled out in her briefings every week. Cutting an apple in
semi-darkness, the only light coming from the open refrigerator, Audra knows
she returns to the apples because they’re the last connection she shares with
Ginny. The way a knife sounds slicing through the skin, the crunch of the fruit’s
flesh between her teeth, the release of the juice as she mashes it to a pulp
all serve to remind her daily of what she walked away from and what she now
has. When she finds a soft one in the bowl, her need to bite down, to tear into
life is replaced with a softer feeling, something closer to joy, something less
harsh. This apple business seems like it’s been going on for too many years to
count, but not enough to forget. And every season, she finds herself in the
same place all over again.
It’s
not that she ever wanted to say goodbye, or that she couldn’t have continued;
she knew she had to, that she deserved more than what that small town nestled
in the Kentucky hills could offer. Still, this season especially, leaves her
homesick, remembering days that were easy and simple. Though lately, she’s
having trouble plucking the individual memories from her mind; rather, she
drifts between feelings, images of woods, that rocking chair where Mama always
sat creaking back and forth while she worried her fingers and knit her yarn.
Aunt
Hazel had been the one to make the call. Over the years, Audra has wondered why
it was Hazel and not one of her brothers; maybe Jimmy and Pete were too busy
making arrangements, collecting the body from the old wooden porch, picking up
the pieces of her skull from the crevices, putting the gun away. They’ve never
discussed it, and probably never will. Audra knew what Hazel would say before
she answered the phone. Ginny was dead, and there was no way getting around
that. What Audra didn’t expect was that sinking sort of feeling to wash over
her. She’d been standing in the kitchen of the house she shared with two people
she didn’t know, eating an apple. Mid-bite, the phone rang, and Audra took the
call before she’d finished swallowing. Now, these four am apple binges are her
only act of contrition she can offer a mother who was there but not her entire
life.
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