In Flight
My third entry for the writing competition brigits_flame. This week's prompt was "Happiness is...".
In Flight
My name is Gladys Rosemary Hartson. I am 57 years old, and boy do I look it. I am roughly five-foot-five, with long white hair (complete with split ends - bane of my life) that I like to tie into a tight bun for work. I have blue eyes, brilliant white dentures (though I would trade my still-intact hair to get my own teeth back any day) and I've that round, shapeless kind of figure that you'll be familiar with from seeing other women of my age. I am a mother to Lily and a grandmother to Sara, who is now a toddler. My husband Derek left me six years ago for a 47 year old, unnaturally tanned peroxide-blonde. In all seriousness, she looked like Billy Idol crossed with a leather bag, so it didn't half gall me when he packed his bags to go and live with one.
Although I received a fairly hefty divorce settlement (which surprised me, I must say; he must have had a whole lot of money in the background that I knew nothing about), like most divorcees I still have to work to get by. Since I'm not actually trained in any profession - come on, I was 18 when I got married, my husband fed me a line, I never had to work - my job is to drive subway trains. You've probably seen me. As the train pulls in to the station, if you're paying attention, and your eyes are in the right place, you'll see me zoom by, a flash of white hair and sagging, pale skin. You'll likely note the bland, bored smile on my face. Why shouldn't I smile like this? Have you ever driven a subway train? A well-trained dog could probably do it. There is one accelerator pedal, two levers, and three buttons. Even the buttons provide no passing amusement or distraction; they don't even light up, they're just there! I press on the accelerator pedal and shoot through the tunnels from station to station, no longer moved by the speed or the momentum, just...gliding in the dark, really. And all the time with this silly, empty smile on my face.
I would never, of course, let on to Lily that I'm so horribly lonely and unhappy all the time. She's got enough on her hands with my granddaughter, and boisterous she is too. Of course, telling my ex-husband is out of the question: he now lives in Switzerland, and anyway I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. No; I dump all my problems on my counsellor, Gerald. He's a sweet man, is Gerald, probably in his 30s, probably homosexual, but very nice and helpful all the same. He enthusiastically signs my prescriptions for Vicodin, Lithium, Prozac...Christ, even Viagra, if I want it. (For the record, I tried Viagra; it gives a woman an unpleasant tickling sensation in her nethers and an uncontrollable case of the sweats, but that's about it).
So for the past few years I've just been trundling through my insignificant little life, most of the time hyped-up or doped-down on some kind of mood-altering drug, getting up every morning, taming my hair, brushing my dentures, stumbling to work, down into the depths, shooting through the subway like some great, blind worm, then popping up again at 6pm, blinking in the bright sunlight, wondering what the Hell I'm doing living my life in the dark.
That is, until a pretty unimportant Wednesday off from work turned it all around.
As is usual for my days off, I got up after midday. For breakfast I mixed myself the driest vodka Martini I could manage, and garnished it with four olives and several Prozac. I made myself a makeshift chaise longue out of my armchair and several stools, padded with my duvet and pillows, and set myself up for a day of jazz music, vodka and swooning in my darkened lounge. By 9pm it was dark outside and I was indecently trashed. Every time I got up to fetch some more vodka my apartment was spinning around me, and I was swaying more, unsteady and unbalanced. The vodka and Prozac made for a heady mix, but I was pleased and warm and that was all I really cared about. I'm fairly sure that the smile plastered across my face was even genuine. Such is the danger of alcohol, I suppose.
I sauntered ridiculously over to the window for a smoke. Feeling dramatic, I flung it wide. I wanted to either embrace the world, or tell it quite loudly and definitively to fuck off. I looked down to the deserted street and felt cold rain on my head as I leaned a little way out to wink coquettishly at a post box I thought was a man, six floors down on the ground. Shivering, I stepped back in and with clumsy hands I tried to light my cigarette. The light breeze from outside was hindering the flame of my lighter.
"Fuck it," I grumbled, leaning away from the window and turning so my back was to it. Cigarette between my lips, leaning close I flicked the lighter, again, again, again, and then the bright flame popped up. As it did so, it singed my eyebrows and the front of my hair. In my drunken shock I jerked my head back, my body went with it and in a swift and uninterrupted motion I tumbled backwards, headlong out of the window. I don't remember registering much in the three seconds it took me to fall - only the dim thought that there were six floors, and a momentary irrational annoyance that my new silk nightdress was getting wet, and then...impact.
The biggest shock came when I realised that I wasn't actually dead. In instinct I had screwed my eyes shut, bracing myself for the final blow, but nothing came. In the dark I could hear the rain by my sides; feel it on my back. I could smell the tarmac on which my feet were firmly planted - and that was the strangest thing. Drunken lack of balance aside...I was on my feet. I wasn't actually standing, I was crouched, as if ready to pounce, but I was upright, and I was on my feet. Slowly, warily, I opened my eyes to find myself staring at my rather fabulous white slippers, becoming sodden in the rain and splashed with a bit of mud from the ground. I raised my head, rain flattening my hair, which was straggling across my face. I swiped it out of my face with my hand and began to stand, finding with amazement that there was no pain in my legs or feet. In fact, they were just as relaxed and unharmed as when I'd been stretched out like a pentagenarian Greta Garbo in my living room, only a few minutes ago. Just a lot wetter. I looked down at my slippers again, wiggled my miraculously unbroken toes, and noted my soggy cigarette and smashed lighter nearby. Then I lifted my head and looked behind to see the distance I had fallen, my window looking so small up there, with the curtains pulled outside by the wind and flapping wetly against the outside wall.
There was not a soul in the street. Shakily, though no less drunk, I walked to the door and climbed the six flights of stairs back up to my apartment. When I got back in, everything was just as I had left it. My stereo, still murmuring out some smooth jazz, my Martini glass by my altered armchair, the window still wide open. One of the questions at the forefront of my mind was: what the Hell had just happened? A second was: how am I not dead?
A third was: could I do it again?
I don't know whether it was the Smirnoff, or whether it was the Prozac, or whether it was the adrenaline still coursing through my system with the thrill of having literally defied death. Not a moment later I had kicked off my soaked slippers and was running across my living room floor, at full speed, closing my eyes, flinging myself blind through the window and hurtling out into the rain. My arms and legs were at a full-length stretch, like a diver, spinning gracefully through the air. I felt water on my hair and face and legs as I arced gracefully against the sky and a moment later I felt impact on my hands. As though through muscular instinct my arms absorbed the blow; I tucked, rolled, and landed upright, one knee on the ground, the other brought up against my chest with my bare foot against cold, wet brick. Opening my eyes, I marked with profound awe that I was on the roof of the apartment block across the street. Quicker this time, I stood up and turned around. There was my open window, probably two floors up from where I stood now, and a good forty feet away. Shrieking with joy, I threw my arms up and did a little rain-dance right there on that roof, with all the city stretched out before me.
So now, when I get up in the morning, instead of having a gin-and-Tofranil for breakfast, I have a cup of tea and listen to the radio. I walk to work, down into the depths, and ferry people to-and-fro on the subway with barely a gripe. If you catch a flash of my face as I speed by, you might now see that my smile is no longer forced, or disingenuous; it is content. It's because I know that when I finish work, and climb the stairs into the sun, that I'm going to go home and wait for the dark, because that's when I really come into my own. That's when I spring from my sixth-floor window and out into the city, running and bounding from rooftop to rooftop, sliding along gutters, somersaulting from chimneys. I've been testing my abilities, and as time goes by I find I'm stronger and faster. I can now fall from ten or eleven floors before I begin to feel even a twinge in my legs or feet. I've been developing my jumping skills, too - I can now leap from the ground to a third-floor roof in a single bound. Just the other day I outran a speeding car down on the ground while I was up on the rooftops, it must have been doing forty, easy. But my favourite thing is to test my jumping distance. Prepare a run-up. Take a deep breath. See my landing point. Run, limbs pumping, veins in my head thrumming, until my toes touch the rooftop edge. Then I leap, full-length, across the distance, sailing through the open air. If I close my eyes, in that moment when I feel weightless and I lose my stomach, I can almost pretend I'm in flight, and now I know that happiness, oh...happiness is flying.
© Jerrard Doran, 2008
In Flight
My name is Gladys Rosemary Hartson. I am 57 years old, and boy do I look it. I am roughly five-foot-five, with long white hair (complete with split ends - bane of my life) that I like to tie into a tight bun for work. I have blue eyes, brilliant white dentures (though I would trade my still-intact hair to get my own teeth back any day) and I've that round, shapeless kind of figure that you'll be familiar with from seeing other women of my age. I am a mother to Lily and a grandmother to Sara, who is now a toddler. My husband Derek left me six years ago for a 47 year old, unnaturally tanned peroxide-blonde. In all seriousness, she looked like Billy Idol crossed with a leather bag, so it didn't half gall me when he packed his bags to go and live with one.
Although I received a fairly hefty divorce settlement (which surprised me, I must say; he must have had a whole lot of money in the background that I knew nothing about), like most divorcees I still have to work to get by. Since I'm not actually trained in any profession - come on, I was 18 when I got married, my husband fed me a line, I never had to work - my job is to drive subway trains. You've probably seen me. As the train pulls in to the station, if you're paying attention, and your eyes are in the right place, you'll see me zoom by, a flash of white hair and sagging, pale skin. You'll likely note the bland, bored smile on my face. Why shouldn't I smile like this? Have you ever driven a subway train? A well-trained dog could probably do it. There is one accelerator pedal, two levers, and three buttons. Even the buttons provide no passing amusement or distraction; they don't even light up, they're just there! I press on the accelerator pedal and shoot through the tunnels from station to station, no longer moved by the speed or the momentum, just...gliding in the dark, really. And all the time with this silly, empty smile on my face.
I would never, of course, let on to Lily that I'm so horribly lonely and unhappy all the time. She's got enough on her hands with my granddaughter, and boisterous she is too. Of course, telling my ex-husband is out of the question: he now lives in Switzerland, and anyway I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. No; I dump all my problems on my counsellor, Gerald. He's a sweet man, is Gerald, probably in his 30s, probably homosexual, but very nice and helpful all the same. He enthusiastically signs my prescriptions for Vicodin, Lithium, Prozac...Christ, even Viagra, if I want it. (For the record, I tried Viagra; it gives a woman an unpleasant tickling sensation in her nethers and an uncontrollable case of the sweats, but that's about it).
So for the past few years I've just been trundling through my insignificant little life, most of the time hyped-up or doped-down on some kind of mood-altering drug, getting up every morning, taming my hair, brushing my dentures, stumbling to work, down into the depths, shooting through the subway like some great, blind worm, then popping up again at 6pm, blinking in the bright sunlight, wondering what the Hell I'm doing living my life in the dark.
That is, until a pretty unimportant Wednesday off from work turned it all around.
As is usual for my days off, I got up after midday. For breakfast I mixed myself the driest vodka Martini I could manage, and garnished it with four olives and several Prozac. I made myself a makeshift chaise longue out of my armchair and several stools, padded with my duvet and pillows, and set myself up for a day of jazz music, vodka and swooning in my darkened lounge. By 9pm it was dark outside and I was indecently trashed. Every time I got up to fetch some more vodka my apartment was spinning around me, and I was swaying more, unsteady and unbalanced. The vodka and Prozac made for a heady mix, but I was pleased and warm and that was all I really cared about. I'm fairly sure that the smile plastered across my face was even genuine. Such is the danger of alcohol, I suppose.
I sauntered ridiculously over to the window for a smoke. Feeling dramatic, I flung it wide. I wanted to either embrace the world, or tell it quite loudly and definitively to fuck off. I looked down to the deserted street and felt cold rain on my head as I leaned a little way out to wink coquettishly at a post box I thought was a man, six floors down on the ground. Shivering, I stepped back in and with clumsy hands I tried to light my cigarette. The light breeze from outside was hindering the flame of my lighter.
"Fuck it," I grumbled, leaning away from the window and turning so my back was to it. Cigarette between my lips, leaning close I flicked the lighter, again, again, again, and then the bright flame popped up. As it did so, it singed my eyebrows and the front of my hair. In my drunken shock I jerked my head back, my body went with it and in a swift and uninterrupted motion I tumbled backwards, headlong out of the window. I don't remember registering much in the three seconds it took me to fall - only the dim thought that there were six floors, and a momentary irrational annoyance that my new silk nightdress was getting wet, and then...impact.
The biggest shock came when I realised that I wasn't actually dead. In instinct I had screwed my eyes shut, bracing myself for the final blow, but nothing came. In the dark I could hear the rain by my sides; feel it on my back. I could smell the tarmac on which my feet were firmly planted - and that was the strangest thing. Drunken lack of balance aside...I was on my feet. I wasn't actually standing, I was crouched, as if ready to pounce, but I was upright, and I was on my feet. Slowly, warily, I opened my eyes to find myself staring at my rather fabulous white slippers, becoming sodden in the rain and splashed with a bit of mud from the ground. I raised my head, rain flattening my hair, which was straggling across my face. I swiped it out of my face with my hand and began to stand, finding with amazement that there was no pain in my legs or feet. In fact, they were just as relaxed and unharmed as when I'd been stretched out like a pentagenarian Greta Garbo in my living room, only a few minutes ago. Just a lot wetter. I looked down at my slippers again, wiggled my miraculously unbroken toes, and noted my soggy cigarette and smashed lighter nearby. Then I lifted my head and looked behind to see the distance I had fallen, my window looking so small up there, with the curtains pulled outside by the wind and flapping wetly against the outside wall.
There was not a soul in the street. Shakily, though no less drunk, I walked to the door and climbed the six flights of stairs back up to my apartment. When I got back in, everything was just as I had left it. My stereo, still murmuring out some smooth jazz, my Martini glass by my altered armchair, the window still wide open. One of the questions at the forefront of my mind was: what the Hell had just happened? A second was: how am I not dead?
A third was: could I do it again?
I don't know whether it was the Smirnoff, or whether it was the Prozac, or whether it was the adrenaline still coursing through my system with the thrill of having literally defied death. Not a moment later I had kicked off my soaked slippers and was running across my living room floor, at full speed, closing my eyes, flinging myself blind through the window and hurtling out into the rain. My arms and legs were at a full-length stretch, like a diver, spinning gracefully through the air. I felt water on my hair and face and legs as I arced gracefully against the sky and a moment later I felt impact on my hands. As though through muscular instinct my arms absorbed the blow; I tucked, rolled, and landed upright, one knee on the ground, the other brought up against my chest with my bare foot against cold, wet brick. Opening my eyes, I marked with profound awe that I was on the roof of the apartment block across the street. Quicker this time, I stood up and turned around. There was my open window, probably two floors up from where I stood now, and a good forty feet away. Shrieking with joy, I threw my arms up and did a little rain-dance right there on that roof, with all the city stretched out before me.
So now, when I get up in the morning, instead of having a gin-and-Tofranil for breakfast, I have a cup of tea and listen to the radio. I walk to work, down into the depths, and ferry people to-and-fro on the subway with barely a gripe. If you catch a flash of my face as I speed by, you might now see that my smile is no longer forced, or disingenuous; it is content. It's because I know that when I finish work, and climb the stairs into the sun, that I'm going to go home and wait for the dark, because that's when I really come into my own. That's when I spring from my sixth-floor window and out into the city, running and bounding from rooftop to rooftop, sliding along gutters, somersaulting from chimneys. I've been testing my abilities, and as time goes by I find I'm stronger and faster. I can now fall from ten or eleven floors before I begin to feel even a twinge in my legs or feet. I've been developing my jumping skills, too - I can now leap from the ground to a third-floor roof in a single bound. Just the other day I outran a speeding car down on the ground while I was up on the rooftops, it must have been doing forty, easy. But my favourite thing is to test my jumping distance. Prepare a run-up. Take a deep breath. See my landing point. Run, limbs pumping, veins in my head thrumming, until my toes touch the rooftop edge. Then I leap, full-length, across the distance, sailing through the open air. If I close my eyes, in that moment when I feel weightless and I lose my stomach, I can almost pretend I'm in flight, and now I know that happiness, oh...happiness is flying.
© Jerrard Doran, 2008