In the afternoon, while people were at work, Laura watched “Matlock.”
She tried to explain it to Mary one day while they talked on the phone.
“It's comforting to me,” she said. “I can doze to it. And then when I wake up, there's Andy Griffith. And for a minute, I think it's Mayberry, but then I remember that he's a lawyer now, and that justice will be served, because how can it not be? Because, even if this is another show, it doesn't matter. He will always be Andy from Mayberry.”
Mary felt the weight of the receiver in her hand. The whistle showed up in her head, that theme song from their childhood, a jaunty, innocent tune that welcomed you into a town where Don Knotts could be a deputy, and Floyd was their silly town drunk, and Aunt Bea could be counted on for lemonade.
“You know, I've never seen Matlock," she said.
She tried to keep her voice even. She didn't tell Laura that she couldn't imagine ever watching it, that it was entertainment designed for people who wore polyester and looked forward to the Early Bird dinner. It was for people who found the acting on “Murder She Wrote” nuanced. In her private version of hell, they ran “Matlock” in a continuous loop.
“Dick Van Dyke was on it today,” Laura said. “He was a judge who murdered his mistress and framed her lover.”
Mary imagined Rob Petrie jumping over furniture in a long black robe. This time, he lands on his feet.
Sometimes Mary thought that she and Laura became friends, because they both weren't ordinary citizens. They belonged to one of the tribes who had to go to church basements and make their identity known.
“I'm Mary,” she would say. “Anorexic/bulimic.”
Anorexic/bulimics didn't have their own meetings. You had to hang out with garden variety overeaters who had no inkling of the power to be found in wasting away. At 12 years old, Mary imagined that a devil seduced her. He woke her up out of slumber, whispered in her ear, told her she was so, so pretty, asked her if she would like to be ideal. And she smiled and pushed her plate away and said yes, oh, yes, please, teach me. And she grew smaller and smaller and watched the horror in the faces around her, and the devil tickled her ribs, and told her it wouldn't be long now. But then one day something broke. She found a magazine under her mother's bed with a page folded to an article. It was all about a new disease. Anorexia nervosa, they called it. As she read, the demon screamed. She heard him race away. She imagined it was to regroup. The next day she began to eat and didn't want to stop. She would eat and throw up and picture herself deep in the ground. She would lie there and think that she could almost hear that demon again, and then things would be so much more orderly. This insanity went on for 10 years, and then she found herself in church basements, listening to other people's stories, and sometimes saying her own.
She had come to the conclusion that the reason why anorexic/bulimics didn't have their own meetings was because if they all met in one room, the space would most likely explode. We're all just too intense, she thought, we need our more regular folk around us. She was glad Laura was her friend. Over time, she could say, I danced with the devil. We waltzed. We did a mean minuet. We sure the fuck did the tango. But in the end, I picked up my dance card and went home.
"It was for people who found the acting on “Murder She Wrote” nuanced."
That made me laugh out loud. Which, I think, made the next section even more poignant. Fantastic stuff.
Posted by: Jennifer | February 04, 2008 at 08:44 PM
Jennifer, thank you for your kind comments. Read slow and read 5A before 5 -- I'm incredibly bogged down with work and won't get back to this for a week or two, and there will be sections between 5A and 5, so perhaps not read 5... I'm sorry I've been so delinquent in my reading duties. I hope to find a slab of time and get caught up in DC duties. I would really like to.
Posted by: Wendy | February 06, 2008 at 07:31 AM