Far from Perfect

By Emily Wahl

The ax fell. She was expecting it, but it still hurt.

“Why me?” was her first thought. She had gotten her hopes up, only to have them dashed.

She tried to put a brave face on it, but she was in shock. Combined with lack of sleep and a mild hangover, her mind was in a fog. A mild hangover, from a non-alcoholic beer. That less than .5 percent had given her a buzz. She really had no tolerance anymore. Thank god.

They had to walk her off the property, they said. As if she was a criminal. As if she had done something wrong. Or worse, as if she would do something wrong. No trust. No “we’re one big happy family” anymore.

Health insurance. She needed to deal with health insurance. She would deal with the money later. No warning, no time to navigate the byzantine labyrinth of corporate bureaucracy

one had to fumble one’s way through to reach healthcare that hopefully wouldn’t ruin you. He had talked about himself and the time he had gotten laid off, and the cost of COBRA for him, and how Obama saved him a bunch of money, instead of showing any sympathy for her and what she was going to do.

She shouldn’t have been surprised. Saul had been fired only a couple of weeks ago for mysterious reasons. One co-worker mused it was for taking time off to help his sick mother. And Saul was middle management, not a grunt.

Had it all just been a lie, that they cared?

And she couldn’t say goodbye to anyone, except for the guards who were looming over them, shooing them out.

It was worse for Jane, she knew. Jane would be worried about the money right away. Jane of the black teeth and the speech impairment. Jane who was a foster child. She had been silent, until she cried out in a panic that she left her thermos on the floor, as they gathered their things from their lockers and the breakroom fridge. She was allowed to retrieve it with one of the guards keeping a beady eye on her.

In the parking lot, she wanted to talk to her, but Jane was obviously in a daze, looking at nothing and no one. She had never asked her what it had been like for her, to be in foster care. Now, she would probably never get the chance.

At least she had Bear. She didn’t know if Jane had anyone.

He was still in bed when she got home, confused to hear someone walking through the back door. No work for him today. No work for two weeks; now this.

They talked about filing for unemployment. There was such a backlog of claims, it was in the news. Who knew when they would see any of that money. Who knew how many hours they would have to spend on the phone. And if they missed a letter when they were out of town, they would be denied. But there was no way they weren’t going on their trip to see Belle. She was too important.

She spent the morning dealing with the health insurance. Online forms, phone calls, emails. Cancel doctor appointments, have pharmacies changed. Bear’s no-cost COBRA had just been extended again by his union, thank god. Try to change the password for the portal of the old insurer, or the app, when the saved login doesn’t work, but it won’t accept the new password for some reason. Try to find a number to call, buried somewhere on the website. Try to get past the machines talking at you, to a real person. Then the new insurer. Deal with those EOBs you just got for Bear, while you’re at it, where the medical supply company got the tax ID or National Provider Identification number wrong again, so you’re getting billed thousands instead of hundreds of dollars. This from a company he’s been forced to get his stuff from that keeps him alive for years and years. They also need things from the employer that just kicked her off the property. From the HR manager that never acknowledged your existence when she walked by you, even if you said hello to her.

Still trying to get Bear’s claims fixed. An even harder number to find. A machine that’s even harder to get past to speak to a person. Finally, a call center. It sounds like her first day. The noise in the room of other people talking is so loud, you can barely hear her. She doesn’t understand what you’re talking about. You try to explain. It happened last time, too. Look at March. That claim got fixed. How did it get fixed? It’s probably the same problem again.

It all goes silent when she isn’t talking. Then, when she timidly speaks again, there’s the cacophony. It goes silent again, as she tries to figure it out. Silence for a while. Then the pulse of the signal meaning you’ve been disconnected.

She gave up for now. Let Bear have a go at it. He’s far more patient with these things. Although, yelling at them is sometimes the only way to get them to do what you need them to do. It just shouldn’t be this hard. Even worse, she spends half the time yelling at machines now. It doesn’t make the machines help you any more, at all.

She kept trying to get up to do things, but she was so tired. Her ears were hurting again, and her glands were swollen. She needed to ask a doctor about it, but she hadn’t been able to, with their insurance changing all the time. She had woken up at 4am with a splitting headache. She had even thought she might need to call in sick, but she didn’t. Hadn’t missed a single day of work. If she had called in today, she would have gotten laid off on the phone. She would have had to go in to get her things. Maybe she would have been able to say goodbye to people if it had happened that way.

The garden needed watering. It was going to be a hot day. The house needed cleaning. Change the sheets, finally flip the mattress. She could only do something for a few minutes before she had to sit down again. Pit cherries while watching TV. That was something she could do.

There were so many cherries! Bear had spent all day picking them yesterday, and he hadn’t even got to half of them. She had spent that day harvesting the currants, raspberries, and strawberries.

At least they had the garden. The garden was her Savior.

***

“Today will be even hotter,” she thought, the next morning.

She was watering the beds in the orchard where she had planted new flowers, when a young man started picking cherries from the tree on the other side of the fence.

“Please, take as many as you want,” she emphasized. Bear had told her people had been asking for them.

He wasn’t startled but seemed surprised. Like maybe he had been sneaking them but didn’t care that he had been caught. He called over to the gaggle of men in front of the church on break from their recovery group.

“Hey guys! Cherries!” he yelled.

Another excitedly ran over. She asked if they needed a ladder to reach more. Thank yous were yelled across the street. She came around with the ladder and a middle-aged man who talked very fast told her it was very nice of her and not everyone was like that.

“I try,” she replied, as she went back inside to get them some plastic takeout containers. When she came back, the fast-talking man explained he was too heavy for the ladder, but he was trying to get down to 230, he was 240 now. The young man was on the ladder, and he would pick for both of them. They didn’t need all these containers, just a few. She told him they could hold onto them, and anyone could take as much as they wanted, gesturing towards the group across the street.

He yelled, “Hey! She says we can take as many as we want!”, and there were cheers of jubilation. But then a buzzer sounded and the rest of them put out their cigarettes and shuffled inside, while the fast-talking man quickly returned the ladder over the fence, accidentally knocking over the container of cherries on the ground, apologizing as the young man scrambled to pick them up, and they dashed back to the church.

***

She harvested cherries all the rest of that day. There were so many this year, and they were almost all flawless. Everything she had done to keep the fruit flies off of them must have worked. The weather had really been perfect for them this spring, too, even though everyone complained it had been too cold.

“Life is just a bowl full of cherries,” she thought, melodically, as she filled up a stock pot with them. Pure joy. Even if it was a lot of work.

She was still picking hours later, when a car pulled up directly under the tree, and she heard a voice say, “See, there’s the ladder, right there.”

It was the fast-talking man again. He had come back with his two kids and his old mother, and they still had the plastic containers she had given them.

She passed the smaller ladder over the fence, so the kids could pick some. The old woman told her about another place that had a row of cherry trees along the road, but they wouldn’t let people pick them, and the fruit just fell to the ground, wasted.

They all marveled at how many cherries were on the tree, “in bunches, like grapes.” The boy was scared to get onto the ladder, but his dad reassured him he would hold it, and the grown-ups taught the kids to try to pick the fruit with the stems, so it would keep longer. They chatted about what she had done to take care of the tree, and different ways to preserve cherries, and about how many raspberries there were this year, too.

The boy said he could climb the tree, if he wasn’t afraid of heights. She said she had never tried to climb it and thought about Belle, who was still too little to climb trees before she left, but she loved harvesting the apples last fall. It was great to watch the kids enjoy picking cherries and to know they were getting some healthy food for free. Their dad joked it was their dinner tonight after grandma warned them not to eat too many. “Well, maybe he was joking,” she thought.

They thanked her over and over again, even while she insisted they were doing her a favor. And then they drove away, and she didn’t know if she would ever see them again, but she was happy.

“Life is just a bowl full of cherries…you live, you laugh, and you love,” she silently sang to herself, getting the lyrics all wrong.

Emily Wahl is a filmmaker and the manager of a small production company, Book Light Pictures, and her travel writing can be found on Travel Oregon. She has also toiled as a manual laborer, cared for many children, and tended many gardens over the years, after studying Literature and Creative Writing at Bard College. She waits in breathless anticipation for what life has next in store for her.