Saturday's Storyteller: "Gunther was six years old before his mother realized that he was just a sack of potatoes."
by Belinda Roddie
Gunther was six years old before his mother realized that he was just a sack of potatoes. Granted, his sister was a giant cucumber, while his older brother had won first prize for biggest watermelon at the county fair. And anyway, Gunther's father was a box of saltine crackers.
Ms. Dreyfuss had been coping with the loss of her family pet - a sweet little old Corgi named Sir Lawrence Addley Howard Charlemagne IV, who had always kept her company on her little front porch in front of her little mobular home. There had been no Sir Lawrence Addley Howard Charlemagne III, or II, or even I. The number four - especially in roman numeral form - just pleased Ms. Dreyfuss to no end.
So after burying the poor old fluffy man in the yard with a sprig of fresh lilies (which, ironically, could be toxic to both dogs and cats, but the Corgi was already dead, so what did it matter?), Ms. Dreyfuss created her own little family. For some time, she even carried around a pillow under her two sizes too large shirt before actually believing she was pregnant with a child. In the end, the stale wafers in the cardboard box from 1988 was looking more and more like a handsome husband with gray on both sides of his head and dapper sideburns, the silver logo appearing to be a bowtie he liked to wear to work. Her world was hers alone, and no one bothered her because she never bothered anyone else save for her neighbor Amy, who took note of how many times the woman dropped a cucumber, a watermelon, and a sack of spuds onto the sidewalk and wished them off to school.
Amy was a freshly divorced thirty-something who still looked like she was twenty-three but felt more like she was forty-eight. Not quite middle-aged, but weary enough to get precariously close to too early of a mid-life crisis. She worked a dead-end receptionist job at the nearest dentist office, and her supervisor, the steely mouthed, heavily accented Doctor Ivan Afanasi, made way too many Soviet Union jokes for her liking. The guy was Russian and thought "In Soviet Russia" jokes were hilarious in an ironic, hipster sort of way, and it was becoming horribly grating. Amy would quit were it not for the decent income, the health benefits, and, admittedly, the very satisfying teeth scrubbing by Mister Yours Truly.
The worst part of it all was that after Amy had divorced, colleagues had taken notice. No, Ivan hadn't attempted to waddle into her life with a good old Siberian adage. No, one of the dental assistants was out for her now. Hank Greenwood always managed to preach good flossing to the kids who were dragged in screaming into the sterile white room lined with very sharp implements, and yet he had more fillings than real teeth now. He would flash a pretty sleazy smile at Amy as he passed her desk, and all she'd get was an intruding flash of bronze, silver, and gold. Sometimes she had to fight off shielding her eyes, whether she wanted to mock him or simply didn't want to look at his metallic smirk.
Hank was thirty-nine and had beaten Amy in the divorce contest - he had been divorced twice, once at the age of nineteen after one year of marriage to his high school sweetheart, again just three years ago when his wife had decided she would rather date a balding rich businessman who had once been one of Afanasi's customers. Now Amy was sure that the poor guy didn't come in for fear that Hank would sedate him and yank out his bicuspids one by one with a dirty pair of forceps. In short, Hank was slimy, overly animated around clients, a failure at wit, and all around a fairly sadistic, anti-social creature. And yet there he was, day in and day out, winking at Amy and never getting close enough to warranting sexual harassment in the eyes of her boss.
"Men will always be pigs, Ah-mee," Ivan would say, always mispronouncing her name. "In Soviet Russia, pigs are men."
Okay, that was kind of funny. But in the end, this was not Amy's story. This was Ms. Dreyfuss's story. And Amy just happened to be involved in the subsequent breakdown next door just minutes after the woman's horrifying discovery of her youngest son rolling around the floor in separate russet pieces, the bag that was once his body torn apart by a sudden fall from a chair in front of the TV.
***
Amy was disrupted from pouring freshly boiled tortellini into a bowl by a harsh sobbing scream from next door, and for a moment, she wondered if Gary Anderson Jr. had fallen off his bike again. But the yowl, she realized, couldn't possibly have come from an injured juvenile. The crying that came afterward only seemed to grow louder and louder, muddled words mixed in with howls and hollers, and the poor woman knew that the only thing she could do now was be a good neighbor and check in.
Snagging her coat off the corner of the sofa, Amy left her cooling pasta dish and stumbled out into the stifling suburban night. As her shoes scraped the uneven pavement, she kept her eyes at the nearest window of Ms. Dreyfuss's house, and she was almost certain she could see her neighbor's shaking silhouette, flailing about like she had just found a dead body. Well, to her, she had found a dead body, and Amy burst in just as the poor thing fell to her knees on the floor, cradling an armful of potatoes in her arms.
"Ms. Dreyfuss?" Amy uttered, unable to say anything else mostly on account of the fact that she was very much disoriented by the spectacle, but nonetheless hardly surprised.
Ms. Dreyfuss did not listen to her the first time, her crying almost primal and crazed. Each breath was a sob, a wheeze a snort, like a large animal choking on food. She let one tater lurch from the crook of her arm, and it landed sadly by her knee, its eyes blankly staring in every direction.
"Ms. Dreyfuss."
"Eh..." That was all the woman could force out. "Eh...eh..."
"Ms. Dreyfuss, take my hand, please. Are you hurt?"
"Eh..."
"Come. Let's get you to a chair."
Amy helped the woman up, and Ms. Dreyfuss didn't resist. The potatoes one by one fell from her bosom, plunking and plopping and clunking along the carpet and the linoleum as she was led cautiously into the nearest easy chair. The television was still on and very, very loud, and Amy noticed that it was on a children's program. Some odd, probably foreign cartoon heinously dubbed into English in order to appease the kiddos.
"Can I get you some water?" she asked Ms. Dreyfuss. She got more crying in reply.
"My baby...my baby, baby Gunther..."
"Gunther?" Ah. The sack of potatoes? Did they think it was a child. "Who's Gunther?"
Wrong answer, Amy realized, as Ms. Dreyfuss wailed.
"Oh, oh, no, missus, I mean, Gunther's a lovely, lovely name! Is that your son?"
"Was my son." The first three words Ms. Dreyfuss had said to Amy ever, let alone that night. "He's been stolen. He's been murdered. My little Gunther."
"Is there anyone to help?"
"No!" choked Ms. Dreyfuss. "My husband is very angry with me, and he's giving me the silent treatment!"
"Why?"
"I don't know!" She pointed wildly at the box of saltine crackers propped against the adjacent couch. "Ask him yourself!"
Amy looked at the box, blinked, and looked again. Everything was sort of making sense now. The cucumber on a chair next to the kitchen table, with an open book in front of it. A watermelon by the window, a basketball propped beside it. The torn bag of potatoes, and the crackers. This was Ms. Dreyfuss's imaginary family. The children she had told to go to school each day.
And Amy had thought Ivan and Hank were basket cases.
"Here," Amy said, "maybe I can help. Maybe...we can call the police?"
"No." Ms. Dreyfuss sniffled and fiercely shook her head. "No, no, no. My husband wouldn't like that."
"Why? Gunther's his son, too, isn't it?"
Ms. Dreyfuss broke into another weeping episode, and Amy tried to concoct something, anything, to go along with the charade. She needed a method to the madness.
"Is Gunther...not his son?"
"No!"
Amy pursed her lips. "An affair?"
It was like talking to a child who had imaginary friends. Ms. Dreyfuss had to be at least ten years older than Amy was, but she was so vulnerable, so small and so fragile. How did she function in a house on her own like this? Was she deranged? Disabled? How could Amy help?
"Is there anything you'd like me to say to your husband?"
"Yes," growled Ms. Dreyfuss through his tears. "Tell him if he has to be so heartless in this moment of tragedy, then I want a divorce!"
Ah. That was when the lightbulb flickered on. Low wattage, but it was there. Amy smiled.
"You know, Ms. Dreyfuss," she mused, "I'm a divorcee, and I can help you with that. But you have to promise to help me with something else."
"Wh-what?"
Amy cocked her head to the side. "How would you like to rebound with a fine dental assistant at my office?"
This week's prompt was provided by Daniel Bulone.
Gunther was six years old before his mother realized that he was just a sack of potatoes. Granted, his sister was a giant cucumber, while his older brother had won first prize for biggest watermelon at the county fair. And anyway, Gunther's father was a box of saltine crackers.
Ms. Dreyfuss had been coping with the loss of her family pet - a sweet little old Corgi named Sir Lawrence Addley Howard Charlemagne IV, who had always kept her company on her little front porch in front of her little mobular home. There had been no Sir Lawrence Addley Howard Charlemagne III, or II, or even I. The number four - especially in roman numeral form - just pleased Ms. Dreyfuss to no end.
So after burying the poor old fluffy man in the yard with a sprig of fresh lilies (which, ironically, could be toxic to both dogs and cats, but the Corgi was already dead, so what did it matter?), Ms. Dreyfuss created her own little family. For some time, she even carried around a pillow under her two sizes too large shirt before actually believing she was pregnant with a child. In the end, the stale wafers in the cardboard box from 1988 was looking more and more like a handsome husband with gray on both sides of his head and dapper sideburns, the silver logo appearing to be a bowtie he liked to wear to work. Her world was hers alone, and no one bothered her because she never bothered anyone else save for her neighbor Amy, who took note of how many times the woman dropped a cucumber, a watermelon, and a sack of spuds onto the sidewalk and wished them off to school.
Amy was a freshly divorced thirty-something who still looked like she was twenty-three but felt more like she was forty-eight. Not quite middle-aged, but weary enough to get precariously close to too early of a mid-life crisis. She worked a dead-end receptionist job at the nearest dentist office, and her supervisor, the steely mouthed, heavily accented Doctor Ivan Afanasi, made way too many Soviet Union jokes for her liking. The guy was Russian and thought "In Soviet Russia" jokes were hilarious in an ironic, hipster sort of way, and it was becoming horribly grating. Amy would quit were it not for the decent income, the health benefits, and, admittedly, the very satisfying teeth scrubbing by Mister Yours Truly.
The worst part of it all was that after Amy had divorced, colleagues had taken notice. No, Ivan hadn't attempted to waddle into her life with a good old Siberian adage. No, one of the dental assistants was out for her now. Hank Greenwood always managed to preach good flossing to the kids who were dragged in screaming into the sterile white room lined with very sharp implements, and yet he had more fillings than real teeth now. He would flash a pretty sleazy smile at Amy as he passed her desk, and all she'd get was an intruding flash of bronze, silver, and gold. Sometimes she had to fight off shielding her eyes, whether she wanted to mock him or simply didn't want to look at his metallic smirk.
Hank was thirty-nine and had beaten Amy in the divorce contest - he had been divorced twice, once at the age of nineteen after one year of marriage to his high school sweetheart, again just three years ago when his wife had decided she would rather date a balding rich businessman who had once been one of Afanasi's customers. Now Amy was sure that the poor guy didn't come in for fear that Hank would sedate him and yank out his bicuspids one by one with a dirty pair of forceps. In short, Hank was slimy, overly animated around clients, a failure at wit, and all around a fairly sadistic, anti-social creature. And yet there he was, day in and day out, winking at Amy and never getting close enough to warranting sexual harassment in the eyes of her boss.
"Men will always be pigs, Ah-mee," Ivan would say, always mispronouncing her name. "In Soviet Russia, pigs are men."
Okay, that was kind of funny. But in the end, this was not Amy's story. This was Ms. Dreyfuss's story. And Amy just happened to be involved in the subsequent breakdown next door just minutes after the woman's horrifying discovery of her youngest son rolling around the floor in separate russet pieces, the bag that was once his body torn apart by a sudden fall from a chair in front of the TV.
***
Amy was disrupted from pouring freshly boiled tortellini into a bowl by a harsh sobbing scream from next door, and for a moment, she wondered if Gary Anderson Jr. had fallen off his bike again. But the yowl, she realized, couldn't possibly have come from an injured juvenile. The crying that came afterward only seemed to grow louder and louder, muddled words mixed in with howls and hollers, and the poor woman knew that the only thing she could do now was be a good neighbor and check in.
Snagging her coat off the corner of the sofa, Amy left her cooling pasta dish and stumbled out into the stifling suburban night. As her shoes scraped the uneven pavement, she kept her eyes at the nearest window of Ms. Dreyfuss's house, and she was almost certain she could see her neighbor's shaking silhouette, flailing about like she had just found a dead body. Well, to her, she had found a dead body, and Amy burst in just as the poor thing fell to her knees on the floor, cradling an armful of potatoes in her arms.
"Ms. Dreyfuss?" Amy uttered, unable to say anything else mostly on account of the fact that she was very much disoriented by the spectacle, but nonetheless hardly surprised.
Ms. Dreyfuss did not listen to her the first time, her crying almost primal and crazed. Each breath was a sob, a wheeze a snort, like a large animal choking on food. She let one tater lurch from the crook of her arm, and it landed sadly by her knee, its eyes blankly staring in every direction.
"Ms. Dreyfuss."
"Eh..." That was all the woman could force out. "Eh...eh..."
"Ms. Dreyfuss, take my hand, please. Are you hurt?"
"Eh..."
"Come. Let's get you to a chair."
Amy helped the woman up, and Ms. Dreyfuss didn't resist. The potatoes one by one fell from her bosom, plunking and plopping and clunking along the carpet and the linoleum as she was led cautiously into the nearest easy chair. The television was still on and very, very loud, and Amy noticed that it was on a children's program. Some odd, probably foreign cartoon heinously dubbed into English in order to appease the kiddos.
"Can I get you some water?" she asked Ms. Dreyfuss. She got more crying in reply.
"My baby...my baby, baby Gunther..."
"Gunther?" Ah. The sack of potatoes? Did they think it was a child. "Who's Gunther?"
Wrong answer, Amy realized, as Ms. Dreyfuss wailed.
"Oh, oh, no, missus, I mean, Gunther's a lovely, lovely name! Is that your son?"
"Was my son." The first three words Ms. Dreyfuss had said to Amy ever, let alone that night. "He's been stolen. He's been murdered. My little Gunther."
"Is there anyone to help?"
"No!" choked Ms. Dreyfuss. "My husband is very angry with me, and he's giving me the silent treatment!"
"Why?"
"I don't know!" She pointed wildly at the box of saltine crackers propped against the adjacent couch. "Ask him yourself!"
Amy looked at the box, blinked, and looked again. Everything was sort of making sense now. The cucumber on a chair next to the kitchen table, with an open book in front of it. A watermelon by the window, a basketball propped beside it. The torn bag of potatoes, and the crackers. This was Ms. Dreyfuss's imaginary family. The children she had told to go to school each day.
And Amy had thought Ivan and Hank were basket cases.
"Here," Amy said, "maybe I can help. Maybe...we can call the police?"
"No." Ms. Dreyfuss sniffled and fiercely shook her head. "No, no, no. My husband wouldn't like that."
"Why? Gunther's his son, too, isn't it?"
Ms. Dreyfuss broke into another weeping episode, and Amy tried to concoct something, anything, to go along with the charade. She needed a method to the madness.
"Is Gunther...not his son?"
"No!"
Amy pursed her lips. "An affair?"
It was like talking to a child who had imaginary friends. Ms. Dreyfuss had to be at least ten years older than Amy was, but she was so vulnerable, so small and so fragile. How did she function in a house on her own like this? Was she deranged? Disabled? How could Amy help?
"Is there anything you'd like me to say to your husband?"
"Yes," growled Ms. Dreyfuss through his tears. "Tell him if he has to be so heartless in this moment of tragedy, then I want a divorce!"
Ah. That was when the lightbulb flickered on. Low wattage, but it was there. Amy smiled.
"You know, Ms. Dreyfuss," she mused, "I'm a divorcee, and I can help you with that. But you have to promise to help me with something else."
"Wh-what?"
Amy cocked her head to the side. "How would you like to rebound with a fine dental assistant at my office?"
This week's prompt was provided by Daniel Bulone.
Comments
Post a Comment