Felony Jones

Pastiche

Mary Kurlow was too sick to travel; she was battling cervical cancer and had recently moved into hospice care. David had been the go-between so far, but Felony had put off talking to her long enough and felt Mary deserved a face to face meeting. Felony hated to fly, but driving to Indiana wasn't an option, her head would have exploded in anger before she even got there, having to share the road with half the country.

     In general, Felony hated the thought of being around sickly people, especially those who were at the end of their life and at their most vulnerable. Making eye contact with people was difficult enough, but looking into the eyes of someone who's death was imminent was excruciating for her. When she arrived at the hospice it was mid-morning and the temperature was already unbearable. Felony had the air conditioning on full blast and it didn't make much of a difference. She specifically told the rental car agent she wanted a vehicle with ice-cold ac, but that didn't pan out. She really wanted to smoke a cigarette before she went in but she didn't want to stand out in the hot sun to do it, and there were no trees in the vicinity to duck under.

     She checked in at the nurse's station. While signing her name, she felt a few stares, but ignored them. As she walked through the corridor, she couldn't help but be reminded of the many hours she spent wandering the halls of the hospice her mother spent her last days in. At least this one didn't have the stink of death everywhere. The hospice her mother stayed in was less than a one-hour drive away, and it was the same area where she was buried—the same area Felony mostly grew up in. She hadn't decided yet if she was going to make the rounds. She definitely wanted to go by auntie panty's old place, but a visit to the cemetery wasn't necessarily a given on this trip.

     When Felony got to Mary's room she knocked lightly and went right in. The room was pleasantly cool and the curtains were drawn giving the place the perfect amount of filtered light. Mary was lying on her side with her eyes open. She lifted her head slightly to see who had come in. Felony walked closer, sitting down in a chair next to the bed a nurse had left for her. She let her bag fall from her shoulder on to the floor. Felony was nervous, she didn't have a natural instinct for these kinds of situations—the terminal kinds of situations. Even when it came to her own mother she had to comfort in her final days, Felony had a difficult time coming up with the right things to say. She would freeze, generally siding with aloofness rather than empathy, making her seem cold and detached. Growing up she had associated vulnerability with weakness, and weakness was something she couldn't afford to be, in her world. The habit was second-nature to her.

     Mary was very thin, but from the collection of photos on the nightstand, it looked like she had always been that way. Her face was a little more sunken, and her hair had thinned out, but other than that there was little evidence of somebody at death's door. For some reason Felony had pictured in her mind a much more deteriorated woman. There were pictures of Mary and her husband and Michael at different stages of their lives scattered around on top of the nightstand closest to Felony. She studied them for a moment thinking about how few pictures she had of her own family. It was almost as if any documentation of their existence hadn't been worth the effort. On the other side of the bed, Mary had a table with a large collection of pill bottles on top of it, instantly reminding her of the time she had one of her most humiliating experiences, thanks to her mother.

     Young Franklin was about eleven when he went to a pharmacy with Ruby. It was in one of those medium size towns, big enough for people not to know you personally, but small enough to figure out who you were with a little time and a little sleuthing. Young Franklin stopped at the magazine rack at the front of the store while his mother went straight to the pharmacy counter at the back of the store. She had to fill a prescription for antibiotics after having received the gift of Gonorrhea from a one-night stand. By the time Franklin got to the pharmacy counter, Ruby had already been chatting up the pharmacist while several older women waiting for their own prescriptions, watched. Ruby was dressed in her usual short skirt, low-cut top and heels, leaning over the counter in what Franklin referred to as, her mating pose. Young Franklin was mortified as he watched the spectacle happening in real time. His eyes darted back and forth from the Ruby show, to the gauntlet of elderly women with apple core faces, giving their play by play commentary to each other in hushed tones. Things people said about Ruby, or witnessed her do, never seemed to bother her, she just carried on like she was yucking it up at some cocktail party, and the fact that she had a social disease didn't seem to slow her down one bit. Franklin sat down quietly hoping his mother wouldn't notice him. It was one of the few times he was happy to be ignored. Ruby swayed back and forth in place, crossing and uncrossing her legs, squirming as she giggled and chatted with the pharmacist. Franklin wondered if the constant prancing was from giddiness or disease. Either way, he felt just as disgusted as the women watching. The pharmacist was at least fifteen years older than his mother—he was a widower, a part time deacon, part time pharmacist, and a pillar of the community. Franklin couldn't fathom why this man would want anything to do with his mother, Gonorrhea or not, but he seemed to be enjoying the conversation. Ruby, with all of her deficits, did have the ability to charm men. One by one, the old biddies picked up their prescriptions, leaving Ruby and Franklin alone with John, the pharmacist. Loneliness or curiosity must have gotten the better of him because he ended up agreeing to go out with Ruby...the when and where was to be determined at a later date. After Ruby got her prescription, she and Franklin headed to the car. Franklin was so angry and embarrassed he stole three chocolate bars on the way out, believing in his head that he had earned them for the humiliation he had suffered. When he got in the car, he folded his arms in a huff and didn't say a word to Ruby all the way home—and for two days after that. A few weeks later Ruby was disease free and ready to get back on the horse, and young Franklin was speaking to her again. Three weeks after that, John the pharmacist was pronounced dead due to an accidental overdose. The pillar of the community was also a part time heroin addict who had injected too much of the drug into his veins. Young Franklin learned that day that morality wasn't just about Gonorrhea and stolen chocolate bars. He learned that piety wasn't a free pass allowing a person to escape this world without some damage. He learned that moral failure came in all forms, and in every heart, without exception. Ruby and young Franklin went to John's funeral despite all the negative chatter around them and sat in a pew by themselves. At one point, Franklin looked up at his mother's face and saw how hurt she was, only then realizing then how much she liked John, which made him feel horrible for the way he acted at the pharmacy. As he watched Ruby dab her eyes, he also realized this was the first time he had been proud of his mother. She could have easily let the judgmental and bitter people from town stop her from paying her respects to a flawed man, but she didn't. She understood his flaws better than any of them and refused to waste her time and energy being afraid of, or angry with people who were never going to change. Young Franklin was going to try to keep that in mind when it came to Ruby. Another lesson he learned as he sat on that hard pew looking up at Ruby, was that moral failure included the inability to forgive the worst habits and traits in people while you had the chance. When he really thought about it, Gonorrhea and stolen chocolate bars were temporary and unimportant moral failures—death was inescapable, permanent and worth regretting.