Category Archives: short stories

FATTY.

addiction, healing, health and wellness, human behavior, humor, medicine, psychology, relationships, scientific theory, short stories, social behavior, sociology, truth, Uncategorized, , , , ,

She knew there was something wrong.

A woman didn’t spend time with a man for this long and not notice how, when, and what he pooped.

Familiarity may breed contempt, but it can also enlighten; problem was, he notoriously ignored her commentary.

She wasn’t talking out of her ass. This was a topic hot enough in her own house. Chronically backed up, she could have used a frank friend to tell her the breath was acrid but, as everyone in puritanically founded western culture knew, almost nobody had the guts.

Yet, finally diagnosed with gluten intolerance in her too-late forties she knew what it meant when shit didn’t sink. So having noticed, the first time, around five years earlier – again – there was no convincing the medical professional. Nurses were the worst patients; the cardiac specialist said so.

No. It would take a big, fat, life threatening pulmonary embolism lodged in the saddle of the artery to drag his derriere to the hospital. Two days in, he’d text her; four days hence, catheter extraction a success, discharged – alive, to dismiss another day.

Oh; and, to ignore all follow up test results, meticulously posted at the patient portal, only to tempt her curiosity. A full year would pass before she, reviewing them all for herself, would see the single, apparently secondary entry: diffuse hepatic steatosis. Had anybody with authority addressed this? Had there been so much as a phone call?

Fatty. Liver. It’s nothing to sniff at. The disease can kill a person*. If left untreated, via modified diet and substance consumption including one Nobel Prize winning drug so reviled by the medical community so as to make its access reduced to out of pocket expense, the liver is overcome by potentially necrotic deposits until its function ceases. We can live without many things in this life, but the liver is not one of them.

And, among its first symptoms: profuse, floating, foul smelling feces.

Right or wrong, he should have listened to her. Now, her voice will echo in his dreams. She’d had enough of his shit, for one lifetime.

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*I knew both a woman and man who had the disease; both were placed on the liver transplant list, and the man eventually died.

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Copyright 4/28/23 Ruth Ann Scanzillo. All rights those of the author, whose story it is and whose name appears above this line. No copying – in whole; part; or, via translation (including RSS feed/exception: Hans-Jorg Ronsdorf, dear friend) – permitted; sharing via blog link, exclusively, and that not by RSS. Thank you for respecting even the despicable.

littlebarefeetblog.com

The Martian on the Attic Loft Floor.

addiction, contemplation, creative writing, drama, grief, human behavior, love, psychology, relationships, short stories, social behavior, sociology, truth, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

[ formerly titled: The Top Stitched Blue Denim Dress. ]

The old, bright red stuffed Martian doll with its assortment of Velcroed noses, mouths, and googly eyes stared up at me from its cast off pose on the attic floor, resembling a mutated flounder soaked in Red Dye #4.

This attic treasure, unearthed alongside equally ancient, Spanky and Our Gang hand lettered school musical posters, cheap heeled shoes, the chunks, pieces, and too-skinny stems of a long discarded Shark vacuum, seemed to taunt me. I, on my birthday no less, had trudged up the too-steep stairs to tackle my loft’s hoard with only one, elusive find in mind: my precious sleeveless, top stitched denim dress.

Mum had made all our clothes, growing up. A master tailor and expert dressmaker, she’d created pleated cuffed slacks, purses, hats, fully lined three piece suits, wedding and ball gowns, drapes, sofa slip covers, and bedspreads. When I moved out at the tender age of nearly 26, most of my wearables came off the rack and not without accompanying angst; diagnosed with adolescent ideopathic thoracic scoliosis at age 13, I would forever be forced to buy ready made clothes that never quite fit.

Never, that is, with one exception: my favorite denim dress.

Mail order catalogs populating my PO Box for so many decades, this garment had likely originated at Newport News or some similar bargain outlet. But, the fabric was solid, hardy, stretch denim; the dress wore well and, most importantly, it seemed designed with my warped body in mind. Boat neck, vertical top stitching slenderizing the line and belted with a slim, faux alligator belt at waist, the dress hugged my wide hips only to flare out toward the hem in a flirty skirt just meeting midway through my knobby knees.

But, because my hips were wider than my compressed, crooked upper back, the excess fabric above the waist served to blouse out over the shoulder blades, masking their uneven protrusion to the right of my spinal curve. So few pieces of clothing – be they sweaters, blazers, or vests – so effectively concealed the deformity I grew to favor this frock, appearing in it everywhere all summer.

In recent years, and largely due to the pandemic, most of my clothes had hung unworn. Now, I’d been sorting through by color and cut, and noticed that my favorite denim wasn’t on any rack. Neither could it be found folded among the rest of the jean jackets and pants. And, this being the one outfit I always chose first, its absence was baffling.

Until today.

Let fate on the day of birth remind an aging woman of her mortality. Add to that one orphaned at the vulnerable age of menopause, celebrating alone after yet another fractured, intractable disagreement with the man who couldn’t love her, I had plenty of time to contemplate and reflect. This dress, its absence looming with prescience, filled the firmament with telling import; I could trace back one wearing, to Miami, in 2015 and there’d been no man in my life since until he who had sent me tearing home from his place twenty odd minutes south, aborting our plans for the day. I calculated, realizing that dress had been in my possession from 2015 through til 2017 until now. From whose house had it disappeared?

We’d spent the past six years breaking up, reuniting, wrenching free again, meeting to eat. His mother ailed; his mother passed; he returned, this time to stick. Over all those years, more than one strange article of clothing had tempted question – tossed casually on an unmade bed, folded in clean laundry, or stuffed under a sofa cushion during a drunk. Had my best dress been flat out stolen, or just relegated to the suspected cheat heap?

Seven hours remained, of this solitary birthday. Carol Burnett was turning 90, and the world of celebrity had a big TV party planned for the evening. Carol was my kindred; she’d famously declared, on The Tonight Show, that yes, she’d be more than happy to get married again – as long as he lived in his house, next door.

I’ll crawl back up to the attic, then back down through the bedroom for one, last meticulous treasure hunt before curtain time. If the missing denim does turn up, he’s off the hook; if it doesn’t, I’ll finally have all the proof I’ve been seeking for so long that the truly loving man I deserve is somebody else, out there, dressed and ready.

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The Martian on the attic floor won’t have to say a word.

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p.s. but if, this summer, you see a sleeveless denim with flirty skirt and a sq………. call me.

(I think it’s an Allegra K.)

UPDATE: Pulled out the last plastic bin, known to contain only dad’s old things. Hanging behind it – in the dark – was the denim dress.

Thanks, Mum. You’ve done it, again.

Copyright 4/26/23 Ruth Ann Scanzillo. Happy Birthday, to Carol, to Channing, Melania, and me. All rights reserved.

littlebarefeetblog.com

The Recipe Card.

addiction, contemplation, creative writing, drama, Good Food, human behavior, psychology, Recipes, relationships, short stories, slum culture, sociology, truth, Uncategorized

CHAPTER 50.

His was a gourmet’s gift. The slurries, alone, always subtley balanced. The rubs, same. You never wanted for naming a dominant spice; rather, the synergy.

And, he loved the prospect of a new “dish.” Let the plan gel, and then heartily get to it.

Yet, the scenario this time was different. A certain clarity pervaded the usually hazy atmosphere. The house had been cleaned, recently, reorganized too. No longer the customary chaos usually accompanying his binges when she rang the doorbell, unannounced, on a night he’d learned to expect her to be otherwise occupied giving private music lessons.

She’d lost count how many times over the years there’d been, oh, two bowls instead of one, an odd wine glass, fried chicken all but gone in the skillet. Then there was the bright yellow stethoscope draped hastily over the livingroom chair, as if somebody other than she had entered via the rarely used front door.

No; this time, the pizza stone nearly empty of more slices than even a fat man could consume, the large, antique China salad bowl oddly cleaned of its contents but, what was this?

A recipe card. For “Linguini Salad”.

Sitting alone, on the opposite counter. Handwritten, in rather large, round, legible script and clean, as if just penned that very day. Not a speck of cooking grease, not a corner turned, fresh as morning. And she, with her annoying visual memory, immediately identifying the writing as unrecognizable.

It had come from his ex-wife, he slurred. Oh; really. All those thirty odd years ago, still untouched by so much as a drop of oil.

And, calling for artichokes and “Paul Newman’s Own” dressing, the latter underscored with proud emphasis.

Why a natural chef would choose a salad recipe from the ex-wife which called for pasta and bottled dressing, to accompany a mammoth flatbread homemade pizza. Why, indeed.

Moving through the livingroom to the bathroom ( in search of the stash of Ivermectin ) and, re-emerging sooner than he was ready, she caught him stuffing something under the sofa cushion and then, spying her, deftly acting to smooth its surface.

Ah. What had we here, then. Black Nike workout pants, far too narrow for his overdeveloped calves. They were his, were they. Would he put them on, to see if they fit? No; he would not. Nor would he tell her how he’d spent the afternoon. He owed her nothing. In nearly six years of endless forgiveness for countless infractions, she had earned no explanations of any kind.

Two degrees of separation, and swift resolution: No; the ex-wife had never used Paul Newman’s Own dressing. On anything.

(Sorry, Paul.)

They say the secret is always in the sauce.

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Thus endeth the lesson.

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Copyright 1/18/23 Ruth Ann Scanzillo. All rights those of the author, whose story it is and whose name appears above this line. No copying, in whole, part, or by translation, permitted; sharing by blog link, exclusively, and not via RSS. Thank you for being honorable in a sea of filth.

littlebarefeetblog.com