"The Deal"
Pam looked in through the open door of her daughter Julie's
bedroom. As usual, Julie has seated at the small desk that was
stuck in the corner of her room working on a report for school.
"How's it going? Anything you need?", Pam asked.
"No, I'm Ok. Thanks.", Julie answered, without even lifting her
head.
"All right.... well, don't work too hard", Pam responded. Julie
didn't say anything in reply so Pam walked away after a few awkward
seconds. Oh, well, at least she was civil, Pam thought to herself.
These days, that was about as much conversation as was likely to
occur between them. The thought made her spirits sink as she walked
into the living room and sat down.
She picked up the remote and turned on the TV but nothing appealed
to her. Not much appealed to her these days it seemed. She became
lost in her thoughts and ignored the images and sounds coming from
the box against the far wall. This wasn't at all the way it was
supposed to turn out, was it?
Pam reached for her pack of Virginia Slims 120s and lit one
reflexively, hoping it would help her organize her thoughts. How
did it come to this, she thought. Just me and my daughter, who
seems to hate me; no husband, no man in her life at all in fact,
other than the jerks at work whom she had no interest in
whatsoever; a job that had no future and offered little prospect of
advancement or satisfaction for her, regardless of how well she
performed; a crummy 2-bedroom apartment in a less-than-nice part of
town, because between her meager earnings and the often-late
support payments from her ex, that was all they could afford; an
old, worn-out car that she could never count on, because she
couldn't even think about getting anything better if it meant
spending any money; in fact, not being able to think about almost
anything that wasn't a necessity because of the money problems that
never seemed to end. The thoughts began to cave in on her and she
choked back a sob as her eyes began to well up.
"Dear God", she whispered to herself, puffing on the cigarette. As
she inhaled the smoke, the sensation she felt from it helped bring
her thoughts back to reality. She looked at the pack of cigarettes,
new this morning, now nearly empty, and thought for a moment about
whether they were now a luxury she could no longer afford. No, she
quickly concluded, thinking about past attempts to quit, you've
tried that before and it didn't work. Jesus, she thought, you
