YADM Madam

 A very recent piece here.  Etheline, Georgia's new roommate, wants to have a party.  YADM refers to Etheline's work place - Yoga and Alcohol Don't Mix is the name of the organization.  She is the office manager there.

Etheline wanted to have a party.

“A housewarming type party, Georgia.  Just a small thing.  I have a few friends I’d like to invite.  You’ll like them I think.  You’ve already met Erica.”

This was true – Georgia had returned home one evening after watching a movie about cats in Qatar and there they were, Erica and Etheline, sitting upon the futon. 

“Hi, Georgia,” Etheline said. “This is Erica.  We work together at YADM.”

“Oh, hi,” said Georgia.  She noted that they were both drinking from wine glasses.

Erica looked at Georgia and Georgia at Erica.

“Well, yoga and alcohol don’t mix but we aren’t doing yoga,” she said, chortling.

“This isn’t alcoholic.” said Etheline, “Erica is kidding.”

“I’m a kidder,” said Erica.

“This is actually a great mix we sell at YADM, Georgia.    Garlic, kale, turnips, strawberries, red onion, mustard greens, pomegranate, jalapeno, and just a touch of beet.  We also offer the option of daikon root but that is not as popular.”

 “Oh, I don’t know, I sometimes like it,” noted Erica.

“We have more in the fridge, Georgia, if you’d like.”

“Okay,” said Georgia. “Well, that’s nice I guess.” It would prove not that nice hours later as Georgia sat upon the toilet rather violently expelling a whole range of colours and textures.  But that wouldn’t be for hours.

“So,” said Georgia.

“Join us if you like.” said Etheline, “We’re just chatting about blah blah blah and blah blah blah.”

“What?” said Georgia.

“Blah, blah,” said Etheline.

“Blah!” exuded Erica.

“Blah, blah, blah,” sang Etheline.

“Blah!”  The pair shouted together.

“What?” said Georgia.

“Are you okay there Georgia?  You seem to be paling.”

“I think I just couldn’t understand what you were saying?”

“Blah?” asked Etheline.

Oh boy, thought Georgia. “I think I’ll just go to bed.”

“Blah, blah,” said Etheline.

“Blah blah blah blah,” said Erica.

The blah blah situation had happened to Georgia once before, but that was way back in the 1970’s and had involved a man, a duck, and a rotary telephone.  It was a different time.

Georgia dashed to her room, threw off her clothes and put on her pajamas.  She huddled under her covers, surprised to find herself comforted by the murmur of chatting in the living room.    She couldn’t make out what was being said but it was generally in a gentle tone, soothing almost.

Georgia loved to be soothed.  The sound of crows crowing was long known to put her into a deep and restful sleep.  Mind you, this was before a crow had swooped down upon her one afternoon in late July 2014, and very nearly cut open the top of her head with its talons or so it had felt.  It had been traumatizing, especially after the bird shat upon her.  She’d been swooped upon before but never so closely and with such intensity.  She understood intellectually that the crow was protecting its territory but emotionally she could no longer hear the caw caw without tasting the white goo of crow shit.

She also found the noise of the sneezing of others –  but not herself – to be a balm.  In fact, her sister right before she left had downloaded sneezing sounds onto Georgia’s phone.  Ah choo!  A choo!  So pleasing, Georgia sighed.

And so, a party.

Well, thought Georgia as she put on her night guard and turned out her light, I could invite, let me think.  Well, I could invite –

Who was there?  Now that her main form of income was tutoring one-on-one Chinese children and Russian acrobats (a surprisingly lucrative venture), her list of co-workers had dwindled to zero.  And Rick and she were in one of their off periods of their on again-off again relationship.  She missed him but was actually tiring of the drama.  With Rick went their mutual friends Jacoby and Jennifer (and to a certain extent Joshua and Justin, Jerry and Gillian although Georgia had never really gotten to know them other than that one night, a night best forgotten.  In fact, they had all agreed to never mention it.  It would be best that way, Rick and Gerry had said, what with the potentially endless lawsuits and what not).  So, well.  Gee.  Georgia hadn’t had to worry about social interaction while her mother, sister, niece, and David were living with her.  Every night had been some goddamn thing or another – a pie making extravaganza (although Georgia had liked the results of the making), yodelling, sculpting vaginas out of clay, ukeleling, group Superstore outings and the like.  It had become too much.  But now, essentially kin-less, Georgia didn’t have anyone in particular to bring to a party that was to be in her own basement suite. 

Wait, am I going to have to bring something was one of her last thoughts before drifting off.  Chips, I guess, salt and vinegar, maybe cinnamon bun flavoured?  Yes, that will do.

The party got cancelled, semi-last minute.  Well, the night before actually.

Georgia had just walked in the door from a trip to Superstore where she had purchased gum, a small American flag, bananas, and two small-sized bags of generic potato chips – one cinnamon bun flavoured and one plain.  Both had reduced salt. 

“Oh” said Georgia, unpacking her groceries.  She tore open the plain chips bag.  She felt a fairly potent mixture of relief and disappointment.

“Yes, well, it seems I am no longer employed at YADM.”

“Madam?”

“Georgia, what?”

“Sorry, I mean I am sorry to hear this.  What happened?”

“Well it was mutually agreed that – YADM and I both decided that it is – it’s time for me to do new things.  Spread my wings a bit and what not. “

“Oh.”

  “I’m not really in the mood at the moment for a party.  I need to re-group.  To settle my insides a bit.  So, we’ll have YADM juice for days!  Luckily I hadn’t really gotten any other food yet.”

“Oh, okay. Um, what do you think you’ll do for work?”

“That’s a good question although probably a bit soon to ask.  I’m going to take some time.  I’m not that young anymore but a career change might be in order.”

Georgia sat down beside Etheline on the futon.

“I’ll be able to pay the rent if that is what you are worried about.”

“Oh, no, it hadn’t.  I mean I wasn’t too worried.”

“No, no, I have a bit of savings.  Anyway, I think I will go to lie down now.  It’s been a day.”

“Oh, boy,” said Georgia.

As Etheline headed to her room, Georgia called out after her, “Is this the same juice we had the other week?”

Heather makes contact

I  wrote this story nine years ago!  I have just massively edited it.  Rick, the one-legged surgeon with whom Georgia is smitten and who she met in an earlier story at yoga, is now firmly in the picture.  There are some problems though that are revealed here.  I kind of painted myself into a corner with his cult involvement so I scaled it back/dropped it in later stories.  All kinds of wrong I realize.  In this piece, Georgia's previously unknown twin, Heather O'Thomas, makes contact.

Georgia has been reeling for days.  Her head, her stomach, her intestines, all reeling.  Her heart has been hitting new speeds and her hyper-flexible right shoulder is doing more popping than usual.

“I’m just reeling from this news,” she tells herself again and again as she lies in her bed, the Walmart sheets and duvet pulled up to her shoulders.

The news is Rick’s revelation of belonging to an organization devoted to saving the world from its impending doom.  These words are verbatim what the organization’s mission statement said.

“Oh,” Georgia had said as he sat in her basement suite telling her the news.  “You have a mission statement.”

Turned out the group had not only a mission statement but a confidential newsletter, bi-weekly internet conferences and code names.

“Oh,” she’d said.  “Oh, well, what is your code name, Rick?”

“Georgia, I can’t tell you that as of yet.  But I will.  It will come, I’m certain.”

He may not have been able to tell her about the name but he had no trouble explaining the celibacy promise he’d made to his mother almost twenty years ago.

“To have this work, Georgia, to really, really focus in, we all need to be celibate.  It’s similar say to a Catholic priest, I think that’s a good example.”

Georgia wondered how that could be a good example, considering that in her opinion and in the opinion of many a school-aged boy, Catholic priests weren’t, well, celibate.

“But, Rick,” she said. “You were married for four years.”

“Yes and Georgia, that was difficult.  We were both celibate for the first six weeks.  We’d sleep in the same bed and such but we were committed, so committed to the project.”

“So you had four years minus six weeks of sex?  You said you were only celibate for six weeks” she blurted out, confused.

“Well, yes, that’s true and because of that, I believe our work stalled.  My mother, the other people in the organization, they tried to talk sense into us, but-“

“But you stayed with the group?”  Georgia was floundering. She felt like a lobster being thrown into a pot of boiling water or even more apt, a frog put into cold water that was slowly heating up. 

“I feel a bit like a frog,” she said, “Ribbit.”

“Pardon?”

“Sorry, nothing I’m just – “

“Okay, well, yes, I was allowed to stay with the group.  After my wife and I split up – she wouldn’t agree to go back to the old way – she said she couldn’t do it.  She’s apparently living somewhere off the coast of Maine.” 

“Oh,” said Georgia. 

“And your mother?” Georgia asked.

“Well, as you know, my father is in a nursing home in the final stages of Alzheimer’s.  He’s been sick for years and years.  He didn’t, he didn’t really buy into the ideals of the organization which is ironic since he was the one who got us all into it way back when.

“My mother – certain people are exempt from the celibacy rule.  As her only child, as long as I subscribe to it, she doesn’t have to.”

Georgia was intrigued and repulsed by how convoluted this was becoming.  The sentence at the front of her brain was short and simple, “This man is insane.”

 She kept trying to erase the idea or at least push it to one of her mind’s back burners.  She was 61 years old.  Her knees hurt, she had arthritis in her shoulders from the hyper-flexibility, she was thirty pounds overweight, she liked to take industrial toilet paper rolls from her workplace home in order to save money, she had no savings and didn’t expect to be able to ever have any based on her salary as an ESL teacher, and she was not attracted to men over 50. 

Before Rick, her last relationship with a man had been a series of early night booty calls with a German physic student with a delightful love of older women.  That was ten years ago. They’d had no emotional or intellectual connection however.    It had been over twenty-five years since Georgia had connected with a man on more than a primal level.  There were far more single women than men in Vancouver and she knew she wasn’t the pick of any litter.  She’d trolled Craigslist personals often enough to realize that most unattached men in Vancouver were gay or simply wanted a woman who would tie him up and call him a bad boy.  She wasn’t going to do that again.  She’d begun to think about Tinder but had so far resisted signing up and swiping.

And Rick, as crazy as he may be, was intelligent, left-wing, well-travelled, kind, a doctor, a condon owner, cooked well, was an excellent listener and he liked her.  He liked what she had to say and how she had to say it.  He liked to buy her those foot-long Subway subs she enjoyed.  He liked to make tea.

“I cannot just bid this man adieu,” Georgia tells herself as she flops face down on the bed, her face buried in a pillow.

“Oy,” she says when the phone rings.  She doesn’t have call display but keeps meaning to pay the extra $20 a month just to avoid having to talk to her roommate’s mother. 

She is expecting a call from her sub.  She hates to miss work but having had a headache for three days, she has decided to take one of her four paid sick days a year and stay home tomorrow.

“Hello?”  Georgia turns and lies on her back.

“Hello, I’m looking for Georgia Gatsby?”

“Okay, yeah,” says Georgia, instantly sceptical.

“So this is Georgia Gatsby?”
“Yes, yes, I said yes. Yes.”  A tele-marketer, she thinks.

“Were you born in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1947?”

Georgia sits up quickly and sees stars.

“Who is this?”  She feels her heart move erratically.  Rick, she thinks.  The organization.  Horse heads in beds flick through her mind.

“January 22^nd, yes?”

“Look, who are you?  I don’t know anything, I’ll tell you right now.  All I know is the mission statement and I don’t even really remember that.”

“No, um, no.  Don’t know what you are talking about.”

“What?”

“What?”

“What?”

“Huh?”

“Sorry?”
“What . . .”

“Look, I’m going to hang up here.’

“No, no.  Georgia.  Georgia wait please.  I just needed to make sure but, here’s the thing.”

“The thing.”

“The thing,” The woman sighs and Georgia finds herself calming down.  Just a crackpot maybe, she decides.  A crackpot who knows my birthday.

“Look, Georgia, my name is Heather O’Thomas and – “

“O’Thomas?”

“Yes – “

“O-Thomas, like Irish?”

“Well, yes my parents – well, adopted parents, were Irish.”

“Your adopted parents?  Look, I’ve never had a kid if that is who you are looking for.”  “Oh, no no.  Georgia, I’m 60 years old.”

“Well, yeah, so am I, yeah.  So.”

“We were born together.  60 years ago, in Charlottesville, at Mercy Grace General Hospital.”

“What?  Well, yeah, lots of kids were born on that day there I’m sure.  Is this about a reunion?  Cause I can’t really afford to go to anything right now but thanks anyway.”

“No, no, wait,” says Heather O’Thomas.  “I’m sorry, Georgia, this is taking me far too long to say this, I’m just so nervous I must admit.  Georgia, sixty years ago your parents had twins, I mean I doubt they ever told you that you were a twin.”

“Well, what, yeah, well, look, they did indeed.  My twin died when she was six days old.  Her lungs were underdeveloped and in those days. “Could this woman remember her twin?  Maybe she was in the incubator or incubator area with her?

“Were you incubated too?”

“What no.  Georgia, I am your twin.”

‘What the heck?”

Georgia, out of habit of hanging up on difficult or strange phone calls, presses the end button.  She lies back down, thinking what.  What what what.  The whats get louder until they seem to burst, leaving her more confused and the reeling begins anew.  Her life has become conspiracy theories, celibacy promises and bizarre phone calls. 

“Fuck,” she thinks and dials star sixty nine

It is a Virginia phone number.

A minute later, the operator is asking Heather O’Thomas if she will take a collect call. 

“You startled me,” says Georgia.  “I don’t usually hang up.”

“No problem, Georgia.  I know it’s shocking really. And, look, I have the papers, all of the legal stuff.  In 1947, Jack and Henriette Gadsby had twin daughters.  Fraternal.  One was born with a heart murmur and 60 years ago, well, your parents didn’t know what that would mean and their doctor was not helpful at all.  So they, they gave me up for adoption.  I stayed in at the Sisters of Blessed Holy Mercy for two years until the O’Thomas’ adopted me. They were older and couldn’t have kids of their own.”

“Look, how would you, I mean, why now would you?”

“I don’t know.  I’d avoided this for so long – fearful of what I would find out. But I don’t know I am getting older and I didn’t want to never have done this.  So here I am.”

“Here you are.”

“Here we are.”

“Look I don’t mean to doubt you but this is so so out of the blue. Do you have any evidence, any proof?”

“Yes for sure.  I can e-mail you it if you give me your e-mail.  It’s all there.  Well, as much information as I could get but it’s enough.”

“Okay, okay.  Have you contacted my mother?”

“No, no.  I figured she would be very old now and I didn’t want to scare her.” So the

“Okay,” says Georgia, “E-mail me what you have.”