Narnia

"'Never in all my days have I seen such terrible things written in the skies as there have been nightly since this year began. The stars say nothing of the coming of Aslan, nor of peace, nor of joy. I know by my art that there have not been such disastrous conjunctions of the planets for five hundred years. It was already in my mind to warn your Majesty that some great evil hangs over Narnia."--Runewit, the Centaur, C. S. Lewis's The Last Battle (1956)

No, no, no, no, nuh, no no... That should have been her answer to Ben.

But it wasn’t.

Rose was singing. It was spring.

Spring. She hadn’t thought it would ever be spring again. It was like bloody Narnia (she meant the bloody literallly) this winter. It had snowed all the time, she kept expecting to see the white witch in a sleigh, Aslan with the fauns, unicorns, talking beasts, and dwarfs, and Peter and Susan and Lucy and Edmund everywhere. And she would have to fight with what? A sword?

She hadn’t liked the Narnia books much. Allegory had swept right over her. it had been almost like a pop-up book! Sitting in the back yard, reading Narnia books because she and Megan had quarreled over another series, Friday's Tunnel, who knows, and she had gotten stuck with Narnia. There had been a Narnia revival because of the movie. C. S. Lewis books everywhere. She thought the gorgeous style was better appreciated and understood by adults.

Fantasy wasn’t her thing anymore.

Sunlight on the sable-colored trees. Everything was sable-colored, including the mud. Very cold, very sunny, and the snow was gone. Mud everywhere. Earth, soil, clay, humus.

Her boots dragged through the mud. Hideous. Cars careered through the mud (careering cars) in the streets. She had to jump away. The boots were high-heeled things that were hard to walk in. Very fun to look at, but the heels kept her pelvis too high. She walked and sang, no one being out on the street to hear her, and brushed the mud off her boots on the wet grass. The mud and the puddles. She wore a white fur coat. The coat had belonged to her mother years ago. She could remember her mother, a hip mom in short polyester dresses, go-go boots, and a fake fur coat, driving them to the store, their daughters dumping junk food into the cart while Carrie stopped and talked to people. Don’t do that. We’re not having that. But her daughters, smiling, usually got away with it because Carrie didn’t want to be cross in public.

Rose would rather have had sable but it was white. Of course, it wasn’t real fur. Her mother had wanted to get rid of it because she thought it was an eyesore but knew that Rose might like it. it was really perfect.

Rose paraded in the coat and thought she looked very good in it. It was something to do with her new dyed hair. The fur was--fun. She looked a little fat, but not too fat. Everybody had good things to say about the coat, especially Ben.

Didn’t Carrie have a coat like that?

Yes, you know she did.

She sent it to you?

Rose patted her coat. There was no use in talking to Ben because of course he had seen the coat before. They had visited Carrie and, bored, gone through things in the attic. They had found old books of Megan’s (Megan was the boyish one in the family, the one most like Jo) and while snowbound read Treasure Island and 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. Then they made up a ridiculous board game about it. It was kind of like Monopoly except they had to sell knowledge about Treasure Island and 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. Rose lost. She laid down her tired head on the floor and sat up only when it was her turn to play. She rolled doubles all the time and sometimes made Ben play for her.

Rose loved the white fur coat and had begged Carrie for it. She wore the coat out to their favorite bar and everybody told her how pretty she was (well, she was still pretty then) and then they came home with bar food: pizza, garlic bread, french fries, things that didn’t go together.

Carrie said she couldn’t possibly give her fur coat to anybody who didn’t eat anything green.

Rose didn’t care because she was drunk anyway.

Carrie said, I might want it someday.

But Carrie looked less than adorable in it as she got older. Carrie was compressed, dwindling, had given up makeup. She was super-normal these days: a woman who went to meetings and played bridge and canasta Carrie confessed that she was bored but there was almost nothing else to do. A lot of her friends had died young (at 70) and Carrie had to make friends with “senior citizens.”

I am not a senior citizen, she vowed over the phone, and refused to join the AARP.

Rose was not a senior citizen, either, but it wouldn’t be that long. When exactly did you become a senior citizen? Carrie wouldn’t even use the discounts. She wouldn’t grow old.

But she had grown old.

Rose pretended she lived in another era. The 1930s, Britain (no UK), cold houses, warm clothes, fireplaces, gloves over lotion, somebody in a movie maybe...

Her assistants showed up at Rock Bottom first. Slackers. She supposed that was the word. They hadn’t quite finished college and in their early thirties worked for minimum wage while their friends married and had 2.5 children. They couldn’t figure out the spreadsheet program. One of them, Cecilia, was fighting with Robert because she was convinced she knew how to fix it, though what she wanted to do would freeze the computer forever, Robert feared. The whole thing was hopelessly stuck, hopelessly a mess. Cecilia was drinking her horrible concoction, something she bought at a health food store, something that tasted like parsnips and fennel and probably was, and Robert, with whom Rose had more sympathy, was drinking coffee and looking like he’d just taken drugs. (He was on meds for bipolar disorder and insomnia, like so many people).

Rose took off her white fur coat after they’d cooed over it. (Oh my God, said Cecilia. A high compliment. That’s a great coat, said Robert. Another high compliment.)

Look. Rose popped a computer button. This cleans up every mess.

The spreadsheet click-click-clicked and suddenly it was there.

Who taught you that?

I don’t know. I learned it somewhere.

From Ben. She’d learned it from Ben. She suddenly realized she’d learned everything about computers from Ben. it hadn’t been that bad. He’d given her a Mac, then showed her the PC, which was slower for her. One was an automatic, the other a stick.

Business wasn’t bad at the store. Cecilia and Robert attracted a lot of slackers. Cecilia knew music, Robert knew books. They were selling a lot online now.

Well, we’re not Amazon, Robert said gloomily as he prepared to mail out some books. Five books today.

Ten t-shirts! Rose said.

After Robert had gone to mail the packages and Cecilia had gone for lunch, she called Megan to tell her she had the coat.

The coat? No fair.

Did you want the coat?

The coat is about an 8?

The coat isn’t THAT small. Maybe a 12.

My 12 days are long gone. I’ll never see a 12 again.

Bet you will.

Wait a minute. You sound too happy.

You don’t want to hear this.

Don’t tell me. I’ve already figured it out.