The Wake

Life has always been easy for Marnie Williams. Her mother was never a crack whore and her father never hit anyone nor anything in his life. Both her parents were relatively no-fuss kinda people. Their home was in a quiet suburb and had a good sized lawn and patio adorned with an oversized chrome “hungry man” grill out back. The refrigerator was always stocked with healthy and meaty options, and the kitchen was neither too dirty nor freakishly clean. The walls were painted up and down with creamish colors and hung with an odd mix of modern art and homey Rockwell prints. Sometimes her mother went crazy and gorged herself on fake flower arrangements. There was a lived-in clutter to the house; anyone would have called cozy and comfortable. To Marnie, however, it was far too Betty Crocker for her tastes.

There was no filth and grime, no visceral reality to that house. Her parents were nothing to scrunch her undies over either. Her father was under the impression that everything would happen in due course. In other words, he was always waiting and never getting angry. Waiting in line at the bank, listening to people rage about their taxes or some such shit; or waiting in traffic, letting one pretentious gasoline whore after another to cut in front of him. Whata sissy.

Marnie’s mother was much the same. She took her time with everything as well. She took the time to scrutinize her flower arrangements and pluck away any plastic leaf which stuck out of the idea as a whole. She inspected the dishes that came out of the washer, then hand-scrubbed them with soap and pad anyway. It took a fucking hour for her to do anything. Whata kook.

Imagine Marnie’s frustration. Nothing ever got to them.

She was just that, a girl who was bored out of her overactive, hypercritical, almost ADD (but not ADD, because her parents were always sooooo patient) mind. She never tried to understand where she came from. She knew she was most definitely the product of her parents’ coitus, but the mannerisms grew out of nowhere. It was around middle school when she first noticed.

It’s that tender age when everything pisses a kid off. The only logical thing to do is listen as skinny boys sing pseudo-punk music and slit one’s wrists. At first she thought it was a fashion norm, but then the years went on and the emo turned into frustration turned into hate. Her parents never got angry with her, only disappointed. Yeah, she was deprived of a cellular phone and money when she was naughty, but they never yelled at her. Never.

“I don’t know why you do this, Marnie dear, it disappoints us so much.” Then they would dip their faces and peer at her over a pair of spectacles sitting low on their noses. It was the worst. If they had gotten angry and shouted curses and threatened some sort of harm to her ass then there would be something to brag about, like a merit badge for all the troubles she went through; a solid base for a good reputation. But they did nothing, only looks and verbal hints that made her feel guilty enough to do what they implied they wanted. Damn them.

So she did the only thing she could do: provoke them. For several looooong years she tried all sorts of things to provoke them into anger. She almost had it, once, when she told her parents she was pregnant with a syphilis riddled baby. Her mother was almost hysterical. Her voice had reached the precipice of shrill and her chest was heaving breaths while she lectured Marnie on the procedures of safe sex and responsibility. But she never quite got there, not all the way to screaming and crying and calling her daughter all sorts of names like “slut” and “whore”. Her father…got the car keys and said he was taking her to the hospital.

Of course she fessed up, and lost her phone and TV privileges for many months. Marnie had never seen the inside of a library so many times in such a short span of time. She also became very well acquainted with the corner pay phone. Its grey grubby booth was a second home. The dirteous prints from her sneakers pressing up against the inside glass were still there. No one cared about the phone box enough to clean it, and she wasn’t going to erase her claim of existence there. It was just another crap merit badge.

It wasn’t long after she met Susie. Susan Tillman: another knackered lady who’s shame and regret had taken a flying leap out the window. Her parents were something of a fiction mixed with half-true legends and fact. Susie could never, or would never keep her stories straight. She mixed the names of her extended family members all the time and meshed different instances with one another. A story of a ruined turkey at Christmas collided with someone, either Cousin Joe or George, dropping someone’s baby during the Easter service. The girl had no patience for details, which was why she apparently let her boyfriend wear her panties as he pleased.

But Marnie didn’t care. She rather liked Susie’s attitude and the inconceivable gaps in her stories. They were two girls so jaded it seemed like a waste to expect much else. Whether it was wacked-out boyfriends, fights with greedy hoes, or dealing with bull shit they just didn’t like, they took it all in. Hell, most of the time they chased it. Why else would Susie turn a blind eye to a man wearing her panties? When life is boring as fuck, you gotta do something about it.

They took everything at face value, and made up all the rest. It was much more fun like that anyway, making your own events and stories. Susie, in all her melodramatic glory, called it liberating. No false hope and no holding out for a damn idiot who said he wanted you and did another. In charge of their own lives and emotions, Susie and Marnie thought of things only through an idea of what they wanted. Selfish bitches they were, but what the hell. Young bitches were more socially acceptable then old bitches. And they were only young once.

“Come with me to Loring Park,” Susie said to Marnie one day in the cool confines of the Williams household.

Marnie was looking through the refrigerator. Sighing to herself, she shoved a fluffy loaf of white bread to the back. This eating disorder study was harder keep up with than she originally thought.

“Loring Park?” she said, “What’s going on there?” She was kind of hoping for a hipster showdown.

Susie watched her from the dining room table with an unconcerned eye. With her lids flying at half mast, her face looked quite uninterested and bored. She sighed over and over again as if it was the only thing she could do.

“There’s this guy there, he goes every Saturday at noon and kind of talks.”

“Talks? About what?” Marnie said as she slammed the refrigerator door shut. She walked to the table and plopped down next to Susie.

“He just, I don’t know, kind of like, preaches to people,” Susie said as she shrugged shoulders and rubbed her arm.

“Oh God, he’s not one of those Jesus freaks, is he?” Marnie said, her face curling in disgust. “Why the hell would you want to go see that cheap spectacle?”

“No,” Susie sighed, “I mean that he just talks and tells stories, nothing biblical or epic like.”

“He stands there and tells stories? It’s nothing special. Fuck, I could do that.”

“No, you don’t get it,” Susie said as she slapped Marnie’s knee. “People say his words are like something out of a different time, like they don’t belong. The way he talks isn’t normal.”

“He’s a nutter, that’s why,” said Marnie.

“No, he’s a Wordsmith.”