(583 Words)
RIF
It sounded like a term in music.
"Let me play you a RIF from my latest song."
But there was nothing musical in losing your
job to being Reduced in Force.
Such an impersonal term.
Large corporations liked their bloodless
terms when slashing their employees’ wrists.
Alice sat down wearily on the couch on which she could almost
see Troop curled up waiting to be hugged.
Troop.
Why couldn’t dogs live as long as parrots?
Maybe hearts so filled with love burst all too quickly?
In that case, Frank would live forever.
May his new trophy wife leave him as empty as
he left her those long years ago.
On the coffee table she carefully set down her jewelry box
which held only the
jewels of memories, some bitter sweet, others just bitter.
Alice made sure not to nudge her champagne glass though it
was only filled with Ginger Ale.
What
had been Frank’s mocking refrain?
‘Alice gets in too much trouble sober to
dare being drunk.’
Alice opened the jewelry box and took out the bottle chock-full
of sleeping pills.
She’d endured three
sleepless months after Frank left to hoard enough to ensure the Big Sleep as
Bogie called it.
Then, on the way home from the pharmacy that third month,
she’d seen Troop, wet, lost, and bedraggled on the side of the road.
Who was cruel enough to abandon a Golden Retriever?
Troop helped fill the void left by Frank’s desertion and
Susan’s death.
Suze, her wry wit had
brightened all her days since grade school up to her brave, futile battle with
cancer.
Alice pulled Troop’s collar from the jewelry box, followed by
the baggie filled with his golden hair taken after he had died in her arms at
the Vet’s.
She opened the plastic bag and
felt the soft hairs.
She blinked back
the hot tears.
She swallowed a few pills, washing them down with a sip of
Ginger Ale.
Next, she pulled out the folded divorce papers and tossed
them in disgust on the carpet.
The postcards and letters from Suze Alice gently placed
beside Troop’s collar and baggie of hairs.
She opened her eyes wide to clear them so she could re-read every
one …
Although she long ago memorized them all.
More pills, more sips of Ginger Ale.
She could hear Suze in her head as she always did when she
knew she was making a mistake.
‘Ali, there is still a
future for you. All you have to do is go
out there and make it yours.’
Alice sighed,
“Maybe that was true when we were younger, Suze.
But you’re long dead, and I’m dead meat. Too young for Social Security and too old to
get another job for which I’m trained.”
Her shoulders slumped, “I am so weary of empty words and
emptier people, sick of unseeing eyes. I
long for this endless sleep.”
Alice swallowed the rest of the pills, washing them down
with the remainder of the Ginger Ale.
She
swung her legs up on the couch. Laying her head on Troop’s favorite pillow, she
closed her heavy eyes, putting the now empty jewelry box on her chest.
It was getting harder to breathe.
A weary peace settled on her like a heavy
blanket.
She almost felt the box slip
from her relaxing fingers, dimly heard it thud hollowly to the carpet.
Darkness enveloped her, and for the first time in years, Alice
welcomed it.
A cold nose suddenly nudged her limp fingers. Though closed, her eyes saw an old friend.
‘Oh, Troop, you waited
for me.’
“Today is only one day
in all the days that will
ever be.
But what will happen
in all the other days that ever come
can
depend on what you do today."
-Ernest Hemingway
For Whom the Bell Tolls
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