The Greenbush Senior Citizens’ monthly meeting is not so much a meeting as a dialogue on the decrepitudes of the absent. A dismal state in all cases. A state no one wishes to belong to and yet, as the self-satisfied woman at the helm of the podium croaks into the microphone, we all will someday.
I’d hoped to be first on the agenda, before the minutes of last month’s meeting, the new and old business, the litany of casualties among the members, but I’m last on the agenda. The local author come to read from her recently published book.
And all but forgotten it seems sitting at the little round table tucked into the far corner of the room next to the kitchen where refreshments are being prepared. The chocolate zucchini bread, the macaroons and the banana cream pies are, I would guess, the reason the Greenbush Seniors assemble here month after month on the same day at the same time. That, and to learn the details of Mavis Shopenhop’s surgery that, they conclude, only served to prolong her suffering; the merits of Lifeline; and who has signed up for the bus trip to All Saints Cemetery in Vermont. My snort of laughter at this last item is muffled behind the fat heads of the peonies that have been placed on the table in front of me.
Peonies are those top-heavy flowers that collapse in a disaster of petals in the rain. These are a viscera pink, the color of those plastic organs you see displayed in a doctor’s examining room. They are past prime by several days and remind me of my Aunt Eza with a drunk on. Like Aunt Eza, the heads droop, almost touching the top of the table. There are layers upon layers of petals, far more than is necessary, I am sure, for any biological purpose. The petals are beginning to curl and turn rusty at the edges. While I watch one falls, making a noise of it.
When my name is finally announced, though mispronounced, I jump to attention, surprised I am still here, sitting across from the peonies that have, in the course of the meeting, begun to decompose. They emit a smell, these peonies, like bundles of forgotten love letters left in a leaky attic. I hope they will not completely disgrace themselves before the night is over. But I have other concerns. The woman at the podium extends a hand and introduces me. She gets my name wrong again, the title of the book right, but calls it a memoir.
It’s actually fiction, I explain to the audience who couldn’t care less. A novel-in-verse. Not a memoir. I hold up the book as evidence. “It’s inspired by a farm woman I knew…,” but I don’t even draw an arched eyebrow of interest. I stumble into explanation, then out again, then into reading. The microphone farts on every other word. I attempt to adjust the contraption, look around for someone to help but no one is looking in my direction. Abandoning the microphone, I gather a breath and plunge into the reading. The words stride out into the room with a pugnacious attitude. Unreceived, they hang on the air, the silence broken by the falling of another petal from the peonies.
Then a face, like a sun-seeking flower, lifts out of a collar. A spark of interest. I nudge the words forth again. They go meekly, then grow bolder. The audience shifts, brows crinkle in concentration. I have them now, following the drum beat of each word. Another face lifts, a collapsed mouth reconstitutes into a ponder. A wistful, beatific smile of appreciation blooms out of nowhere. More faces lift, turn. But away.
The desserts have arrived. Cookies, carrot cake, pies arrayed on a long table at the back of the room with tiny pumpkin shaped napkins, orange paper plates and black cutlery, left over from last year’s Halloween bash. The audience rises like a murmur of starlings. The microphone, all on its own, farts twice.
I read the last line anyway, bellow it, but the chairs have emptied of Greenbush Seniors. They are gathered over the spread at the other end of the room. I look over at the peonies. They are naked and drunk. They have the incinerated look of chemo patients. But at least they no longer carry the unbearable weight of all those petals.
***
Mary Cuffe Perez, author of six books, lives in the upstate New York town of Galway with her husband, Ken. In addition to the books she has had published, which include poetry, memoir, and children’s novels, she has published numerous magazine articles on natural history subjects, and fiction and poetry in a variety of literary publications. Visit her website at: marycuffeperez.com.
