"Whoo-hooo....Foogie-Foogieee!!"

     The rain was absolutely coming down in buckets - really big buckets - as she stared impatiently out the window.

     "Whoo-hooo....Foogie-Foogieee!!"

     "Quasemodo! If you don't shut-up, I'm gonna twang your foogie!!!" That cockatoo was on her very last nerve. What was it her husband saw in that stupid bird? And what was it that took the cabs in this town so long?!

     Oh, yes. "Surreal" was the word he had used....that still didn't explain the cab situation.

     Fawn is taking care of Isobel; Harvey's got a replacement coming in as soon as he can arrive. Calm down Darla, everything is okay.

     "Beep-B-B-Beeeep!" The yellow sedan pulled obnoxiously into the driveway. "It's about time!" Darla grabbed her night bag and waddled through the down-pour to the cab idling in front of the house.

     "Where to?" spoken with blatant indifference.

     "Mirdeen Memorial...and could you please hurry?...Aaowww!"

     The cabby took a double take, his expression one of an oddly dumbfounded nature, splattered with utter surprise. The tires squealed and the young woman in the back seat swayed and bounced. This guy's exit was even more abominable than his entrance.

     What did he think when he saw a woman whose belly could pass for a beach ball incognito, toting an overnight bag, wincing with each step towards him. And this incessant rain....Oh yeah, great day for last minute Christmas shopping! What an IDIOT!!

     "I said, 'Please hurry,' not, 'Please kill me in the process!'"

     "Uh...sorry, lady. Jus' kinda nervous I guess, ya know?"

     "You just worry about the road, I'll take care of the rest!"

     Relax, Darla. Breathe. He-He-Hooo. Just like in the classes. We'll be there soon enough.

     "Excuse me, Dr. Dillydoo, Mrs. Midclausen has arrived."

     "Thank-you, Jenny." Best damn nurse I've ever seen. She's one of those people that really restores my faith in the human race.

     Jethro Dillydoo couldn't help but smile as he remembered the events that led him to his career here. In high school he was a typical jock, fully confident that football would be his life. What else was there? If it weren't for that torn ligament in his left knee late in his sophomore season, who knows? What year was that? '56? No, '57. It all seemed so distant now.

     He then transferred to Selevan State University. in '58, started his residency here at Frank R. Mirdeen Memorial Hospital in '66. He's been here ever since. There was something about this quaint, traditional hospital on the quiet side of a small town he really enjoyed. He grew up in this area. This was home. It was almost too perfect that his career come full circle here as well as his life.

     "Doctor? She's waiting for you."

     "On my way." That Jenny. What a girl, young, intelligent, and as beautiful as the day is long. Oh, if only I were 35 years younger. Damn, sixty next February. How did I get so old?

     When Harvey arrived at the hospital, his wife was pacing the front hall. Watch check: 2:48pm 12-20-97. He absolutely loved that watch. It had been Darla's idea of a gag gift on their first anniversary, now it was a vital part of his life. "You're late again!" She added a look of anguish and a giggle. He loved her, also.

     "Ohh, how are you, Hon?" He tenderly kissed her on her forehead. "Do you need anything? Where's Dr. Dillydoo?"

     "I'm all right. He's coming. Did the foreman give you any trouble about leaving early? Owww!"

     "No, Of course not, sweetie." He had worked for Bildrybild construction for more than six and a half years. His mother's father started the company with a pick-up truck, offering home repair services to his friends and neighbors...for a small fee of course. "Besides, I wouldn't have missed this for the world. It frustrated me being unable to come with you to the hospital. I wanted so much to share every moment with you. I knew I should have stayed home with you today. I just had this feeling, ya know? I...I..." I'm rambling, he thought, embracing his wife.

     He is such a beautiful man. I couldn't have done any better than him. So loving and supportive. Just enough Ego, just enough Superego, and just enough Id. So perfect. I could never watch him suffer.

     That was why she had never told him about that miscarriage six months or so before their wedding. There was no way she could have put them through that. She knew this was true, just by looking into his eyes. They showed her his soul's sincerity in ways he would never verbalize. He held such enthusiasm, none less than with the birth of their first child, Isobel, two years ago last April.

     Such a beautiful man.

     Glancing above the sheet through his half-inch thick bifocals, he said, "All right, Darla, now, push." I can remember when her mother was in this position. Little Darla Takmore was a picture-perfect delivery. Now, here I am delivering that baby's second child. When did I get old? I don't even remember going bald, but the hair is gone. So fast. Life is moving so incredibly fast.

     Fawn Pan (her parents were mythology fanatics), trusted friend and neighbor to the Midclausens for four years, peeked around the door to the recovery room. "Everybody decent?" So typical of her to look first--then ask.

     Isobel Lane ran past her knees to the side of Mommy's bed. Daddy smiled and brushed her brown wavy locks away from her eyes. "Hi, little darlin'. Your brother Neil's been waiting to meet you. Hop on up here with Mommy and me."

     The world's most precious two year old was ready to play big sister. More than ready, eager. She's such a bright child. Harvey and I will have no trouble helping her adjust.

     "The day you were born was the happiest day of my life, Isobel; this day makes it a tie." He grinned almost boyishly and gazed deeply into Darla's haunting green eyes.

     He can be so awkwardly poetic when he tries to express himself. I know he doesn't want to be a stoic as his father was, but sometimes I wish he'd just relax.

     "Aww. He is so bootiful. Yes he is. The most bootiful baby boy I have ever seen. Oh, yeah. He's gonna be a heart-breaker. Yes he is. Yes he is." Fawn's cooing at the baby was irkingly close to being annoying. Small children have adults in the palms of their chubby little hands. Only a baby can bring a whole room full of intelligent people down to their very knees as blithering nincompoops.

     "Did you finally decide on the name?"

     The proud parents answered synchronously, "Neil Isaac," with warm smiles on both faces.

     Fawn took a seat in the chair across the room from Darla's bed, and watched as the four Midclausens sat together, sharing the joy, spiritually secluded from the world. Perfect family, she thought, and a solitary bittersweet tear streaked down her left cheek, carrying with it decades of inexpressible emotion.

     Harvey gently pulled the station wagon into the driveway. The cozy, three bedroom house with a large fenced in yard, almost seemed to sigh with relief upon the completed family's return.

     Click...off with the seat-belt. Clunk...open the door.

     Two car-seats to evacuate this time. Darla couldn't help but linger on her son's fragile newborn stare. There's something special about you Neil; what is it?

     "Neil, I need to talk to you; come here please." Darla's face was as white as a Klansman.

     Darla had no idea how she was going to break the news to the children. She realized that they were nearing adulthood themselves, but having been through so much this year already... Get straight to the point Darla; no beating around the proverbial bush.

     "Son, Dad's on his way home... he's really upset...you see, those cut- backs under Bildrybild's new owners... even though he's been their twenty damn years, those bastards," her voice grew louder and angrier with every word, "I'm sorry..... your father's been laid-off."

     "Laid-off?! You mean he's been fired? His grandfather started that company!!"

     "I know... it's wrong! But, it's true." His mother quivered, fighting in vain to keep the tears away. She knew what this meant. With only one year left on their mortgage, they would almost assuredly have to sell the house. Her house. Her home. And with the town growing so rapidly, there may be no place for them in Mirdeen, the only place she'd ever known. And the children....

     The maturing man somewhere within Neil somehow sensed that he was needed. When he turned fourteen, he knew it meant finally being old enough for a part-time job. His parents had wanted him to finish school first and have all the opportunities that Isobel had, even if he couldn't succeed as quickly. But now... "We'll be okay, Mama, as long as we're together."

     Just then a rectangle of sunlight splashed through the front door, flooding the living room, disappearing with a slam. Harvey Midclausen, once perceivably successful and contented, now collapsed onto the couch in a sobbing form of what used to feel like a man.

     "Now pull yourself together Harvey, we will survive." Somehow, in the midst of all the recent turmoil, his wife's beautiful voice still had a soothing effect on him.

     "Why now? Why today?"

     "I know."

     "It's okay, Dad," Neil didn't know what to say, what to feel.

     "Tonight my sixteen year-old daughter is being inducted as an astronaut. It means so much to her. All of her childhood dreams will come true tonight. Why do mine have to end?"

     Neil had never seen his father like this before. Dad was a "man," he was supposed to be invincible... even to a young man of fourteen, he was a hero of sorts. To see him so vulnerable frightened Neil in a deep, untouchable kind of way. This kind of fear was without reason or logic, yet seemed perfectly natural. It was the stuff made-for-TV-movies were made of.

     "Remember, Harvey. Remember how much this night means to Isobel. She needs all of us tonight. She's taking everything else so hard... you know how close she felt to Fawn... let's not tell her just yet. She deserves, at least, to have this night turn out to be nothing but wonderful."

     Of course the little brother and the loving father agreed with Mom, as usual, and the induction ceremony was a huge success. Isobel's career as an astronaut, pardon the expression, took off.

     But the Midclausen family was deteriorating at an incredible pace. Dad wasn't bouncing right back the way the world expected, and Mom, thus, became an apathetic mess in self-defense. It didn't take Neil long to figure out that he was on his own.

     Thomas was surprised to see Neil smiling as he came through the dorm- room door. He placed his keys on the coffee-table, kicked off his shoes, and sat back in the recliner, without the cheeky-monkey grin even trying to escape his face.

     "Neil, I've been your roomate for two years now and never--not once have I seen you come in smiling..... You got laid, didn't you?!"

     Normally that goofy-guilty grin of his would annoy Neil but he decided to let it go. He was in a good mood for the first time in what seemed an eternity and he wasn't going to let Thomas's ignorance interfere. "Does everything in Life have an immediate association to sex with you?"

     "What's her name? Does she have a sister?"

     "There is no girl. I just had a really good day. No one gave me any crap at work. I got an A+ on my physics test--with very little effort I might add--and I can't seem to find something to bother me today. Just a really good day. Kinda surprises me a little." He looked over at Thomas who was already quite obviously disappointed. Neil wondered if he would ever reach that goober. He's got to realize someday that there are finer things in Life.

     I guess I won't bother to tell him about the sunrise this morning, the great book of poetry I found in the library, or the perfect cup of coffee I had at this diner I never even knew existed.

     "What the hell are you watching?" The scenes on the television set quite frankly disgusted Neil. How do people watch that stuff? Better yet, how are they aroused by it?

     "Richard and Phyllis La Phallice in their latest cartoon."

     There's that guilty-drooly expression again. No, not surprising. Not surprising at all.

     "I'm gonna turn in." As Neil excused himself to his half of the room, his thoughts paused once again to ponder this amazingly good day. "Good night, Thomas."

     "I still think you're holding out on me!"

     Neil only shook his head and climbed into bed still feeling more alive than usual. I hope this lasts. I really do.

     R-R-Rrring.

     "Hello?"

     "Happy birthday, Neil! The Big 2-0!"

     "Isobel? When did you get back?"

     "Two weeks ago--give or take. How's my baby brother?"

     Baby brother...does any one ever outgrow these titles? "Nothing new. You're the one likely to have something interesting to say. How were the last two years on the Panamanian Space Station?"

     "Not as interesting as you'd think but okay. Spent most of my time conferencing with intelligent Lunar bacteria. Just between you and me, they are such asses; they think they know all there is to know about everything. Next time, I swear, I'm going to take a squirt-gun full of penicillin. Put the arrogant bastards in their place. By the way this time I was on the Hungarian Space Station--not the Panamanian."

     "Oh...oh....well, have you tried to get in touch with the parental figures?"

     "Yeah, the phone rang seventy-eight times--no answer. What do you make of that?"

     "Mom's home alone, must be, probably rocking in a pile of garbage."

     "She been any better lately?"

     "You ask that as if you really didn't know any better."

     "That bad, huh?"

     "Yeah, this afternoon I had planned on going over there, maybe attack 'the pile' one more time while Dad's at work. He still says I'm just torturing the woman. Someone's got to do something about her obsessive collecting. It isn't doing anything for her mental state. What does the middle-aged alcoholic bastard know about what's good for anyone anyway?"

     "Yeah, well, Sam just walked in...talk to you later?"

     "Sure, bye."

     Neil grabbed his car keys and wallet and headed for the door. He looked back at his cramped, dimly-lit dorm room that reeked of cigarette smoke, to insure he wasn't forgetting something........No, not quite right.

     Tick....Tick....Tick....Tick....Tick....Tick....Tick....Tick....Tick....

     With the jingling of small oddly shaped protrusions of metal, the clock plummeted to its demise in a second.

     "Oooh, that felt good," Neil said to himself. They never should have invented a device that resounds the passage of time.

     Man's whole concept of time is a farce.

     "Great!! Now where the hell are my keys?!?!"

     We empower ourselves as a society by measuring what we call time. We perceive this to be our way of controlling the big unstoppable Time. What we fail to realize is that centuries, decades, years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds, especially seconds, have all given Time the upper-hand. Schedules have simply made it more easy for Time to control us.

      "Fuck it! I'll walk!!!

     It's sad really...

     Damn it! I forgot to check the time before I destroyed the clock. Alas, my nemesis has its revenge after all.

     Neil arrived at Hal's Everyday Bargain's, and, going against his better judgment, decided to pick up a few groceries for his mother. After all, since his father had been laid-off, all he ever brings home are liquids--the kind that burn going down. He could just let the old bag starve as much as he should hate her.

     "That'll be $28.42."

     Neil grudgingly fumbled through his wallet, retrieving a twenty and a ten. $28.42, he thought, I could have bought four packs of cigarettes for that. He hated himself for being so generous. Seriously now, bagging groceries, part-time at the Hal's just off campus, for ten dollars an hour, while putting yourself through college, just didn't go as far as it used to. And you'd think, that with a grocery store on every other corner, the insanity of grocery shopping would at least be a bit less congested. It all irritated him in a very lucrative way.

     Neil strolled down the avenue at a leisurely pace, a bag of groceries in each hand, perfect balance, perfect symmetry, as always. Watching his feet rhythmically exchange places as he walked, he was startled to feel a hand on his shoulder.....

     "Excuse me, sir, do you have the time?"

     The time for what? Neil snickered inwardly; that one always made him smile. "No, I'm sorry. I don't."

     "If you please, sir, I need to know the time."

     Time for you to get a watch... another classic. "Get out of my way! I don't know what time it is!!!" From the looks of this guy it was more like time to get a job, a change of clothes, and a reality check.

     Shaking his head, Neil dodged to the left, quickening his pace to avoid further confrontation with the stranger.

     Stranger... that's one of those words that doesn't make any sense when really given some thought... stranger... why not weirder or odder?... why stranger?...and what is it that makes a person strange, simply because he or she isn't acquainted with you?...hmmm.

     Suddenly it hit him. Halfway up the stairs to his parents apartment, it struck him like a bolt of lightening. He really had been forgetting something when he left the dorm. His keys... without his keys he would never get into the apartment, if his mother was home alone. She probably was; good old Dad was probably out drinking with his floozy of the week. Who could really blame him?

     Maybe the old woman will answer the door just this once.

     Neil continued his advancement, knowing it would be for naught. This is true insanity. A small girl nearly tripped him as she scurried down the stairs with a beach ball. In December?... Inconsiderate little...... she couldn't have been more than five years old. She had the rest of her life ahead of her (we all have the rest of our lives ahead of us, don't we? it's not like anyone has ever died before dying). Where could she possibly be going that required such careless haste?

     Neil knocked on the door. He hated knocking on doors; it always made his knuckles hurt. No reply, and another attempt at knocking equally as unsuccessful.

     "Mother, come to the door!... Mother?!..... It's your son for Pete's sakes, open the door!!!"

     With all the shouting, several cohabitants of the cramped low-income apartment complex were drawn away from their own soap-operas to gawk at the unfolding spectacle outside. Neil ignored them... tried another approach, "Darling mother, I've come with some groceries... I've misplaced my keys, please come to the door.............................. Open the fucking door, you fat-ass lazy BITCH!!!!"

     In an intense release of frustration, Neil kicked the door as hard as he could... a little harder, in fact, than he imagined himself capable. The door responded by obligingly opening, rebounding against the inner wall, and, with a slam, returning to its previous position. The knob remained locked.

     "Grrrrrr!!!" Neil dropped the groceries where he stood and turned in disgust. Feeling a bit embarrassed at having been out-smarted by a cheap wooden door, Neil tried to conceal the pain in his foot as he descended the staircase, limping and mumbling to himself.

     Dusk was settling over the once quiet sub-urban paradise. Neil had to gasp for air by the time he approached the campus of Selevan State. Over exposure to exhaust fumes. In his ears was an incessant ringing, like that of an inaudible gong. He never understood people in traffic; each radio, in each car seemingly straining to overpower one another.

     Neil's mind drifted in its usual manner. I feel like putting my head through a wall. I get that urge all the time. Maybe it's because all the answers to all the questions are somewhere between the inner wall, and the outer wall. Maybe if I could just get my head between the walls,... I would almost have to absorb some of them.

     The campus seemed darker than usual as Neil walked through the grove of oak trees reminiscent of the University's younger years, from a time when a college education always meant something to the world.

     As he wandered along, calming from the day's frustrations, Neil found himself contemplating the big mysteries of Life: Time, Love, Fate, Life itself. I've got it all figured out, he thought with profound confidence. But the world doesn't see it that way and it all does me no good.

     His contemplations were interrupted by a sharp piercing pain in his chest.

     I'm horribly out of shape; Hell of a cramp. Then his brain allowed him to acknowledge the body behind him, huge and extremely powerful, arms around him in an embrace of Death.

     He felt the pierce mutating into a ripping sensation, following his body's line of symmetry to his groin. The metal blade glinted in the moonlight filtering through the leafless trees as a large shadow fled from Neil's line of sight.

     The pain, he must have cut me or someth..... Neil absently touched his belly as he fell to his knees. All he felt at first was a warm flowing moisture over his fingers and torso. Blood? No, there's too much.... Then his soft pulsating entrails poured themselves through the gap into his hands. As he collapsed he thought, This can't be right.... I was a good son, I was going to be a good husband, I was going to be a father, I was going to be an astro-physicist, in an instant, I was, I was..... I... was...........

© 1999 Lisa E. Stratton
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