Faded Houses Green

I was the only one around the day Georgette’s mother died.

Georgette was away at her private school, which would be in session for another week, while my public high school had already let out for the summer. Georgette’s father and my mother were both at work.

I was mowing our front yard and had waved to Mrs. Jaynes when she passed by on her walk.

Only when I made a turn and was mowing back toward Georgette’s house did I see Mrs. Jaynes lying broken in the middle of the road.

***

She was still breathing when I arrived.

“I’ll go call the ambulance.”

“Don’t leave me here,” she said.

“I shouldn’t move you.”

“Don’t let someone else hit me.”

I picked her up and was about to put her on the grass in front of her house when she said, “Just take me inside.”

So I took her inside.

***

Mrs. Jaynes said, “Take care of Georgette.”

I said, “Georgette takes care of herself.”

“Just be there for her if she needs anything.”

“She wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Mrs. Jaynes looked at me and said, “What happened to you last year?”

“Nothing.”

Mrs. Jaynes looked at me with the penetrating glare Georgette had inherited from her.

I said, “You know very well what happened to me.”

Mrs. Jaynes turned and looked at the back of the couch for a while, and then she said, “You need to work on your bedside manner.”

I said, “I’m not going to be a doctor.”

***

By the time the ambulance arrived, Mrs. Jaynes had finished her finest bottle of wine and had died.

The paramedics said massive internal hemorrhaging and that there was nothing I could have done for her. That was confirmed in the official report.

But that never stopped Georgette from reminding me in my most vulnerable moments that I had killed her mother.

I just wonder what Georgette would think if she knew of the two deaths I actually am responsible for–including that of her first husband. But that had been for my own satisfaction, not to fulfill any kind of death-bed wish of Georgette’s mother.*

* Georgette has insisted I clarify a few points in this story. For legal reasons, I must say that her first ex-husband is alive and well, living in Florida, and leaving her alone. Anything else about his biography is open to your imagination, as is the fate of her second ex-husband. And while Georgette’s mother did die after being hit by a car while we were in high school, she died three days later with her family–including Georgette–around her. In fact, I was the only one of those close to her who was missing, having been sent away because that was during the time I was, as Georgette says, not well. Finally, I am to note that Georgette does not appreciate the innuendo about her mother’s role in whatever made me “not well”. It seems that I will only be able to share the truth about that with you the next time Georgette leaves me and I am no longer under her editorial oversight. I have assured her that you readers are sophisticated enough to understand nuances in fiction and don’t need such clarifications, but Georgette can be a little sensitive at times, and I try to keep the peace whenever she is around. She says that while I’m at it, I might as well also confess that the potting shed is still standing, that there never was a letter, and that I don’t know the first thing about making Chicken Ballotine, and that she’s surprised I even know such a thing exists.

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Originally published April 3, 2020