TheBanyanTree: The Advice Reader

[Pam Lawley]

Again, you've succeeded in giving life to a character that I want to read
more about!!

I love this Neek!!
On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 12:09 AM, Monique <monique.colver at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> >
> >
> > Respond to this post by replying above this line
> > New post on Monique's Blog
> >
> >
> > The Advice Reader
> > by Monique Colver
> > Every morning, before leaving for work but after downing her first cup
> of coffee, Sapphire read advice columns, her glasses-just-for-reading
> pushed down on the bridge of her nose so she could see the computer screen,
> her cat, Penelope, winding around her feet, increasing the likelihood that
> when Sapphire stood up she would trip and fall on her face.
> >
> > It had happened more than once.
> >
> > Sapphire was addicted to advice columns, to parsing the questions into
> their most basic form, and then the answers, parsing those too, and then
> the comments, which were her favorite part because they weren’t edited,
> they just were, they existed in their own time and space, and sometimes had
> no relation to the column itself. Sometimes a commenter, impatient with the
> slow response time of real advice columnists, would ask a question in the
> comments: “How do I know if he loves me?” “What do I do about my
> sister-in-law who brings her twin toddlers over and doesn’t watch them as
> they destroy my beautiful house?” “Where can I get help for my brother /
> sister / son / daughter?” “Can someone tell me how to get someone else to
> change?”
> >
> > Sapphire thought that if she read enough columns she could understand
> how people were around other people, how people interacted. It was a
> mystery to her, something she had never quite understood.
> >
> > She especially loved the amazing letters, which usually went like this:
> “My husband is amazing, but he cheats on me,” “My wife is amazing but she’s
> a meth addict,” “My husband is amazing but he wants to leave me and the
> five kids we have together,” “My wife is amazing, totally amazing, but she
> snores, and every time we plan on having sex, she has a headache.” Sapphire
> loved these letters the most because of the desperate yearning of the
> writer to have an amazing whatever they were writing about, as if they
> really thought calling someone amazing would make all the sad soul crushing
> behavior irrelevant, when it was that same behavior that defined the
> relationship.
> >
> > Sapphire had a very specific skill set which involved computer modeling,
> and she could never quite explain it when someone asked, but she made very
> good money at it. She lived alone with Penelope, because people in general
> annoyed her, but mostly because she feared people, and she could afford to
> live however she wanted.
> >
> > Sapphire’s mother, Gwen, worried about Sapphire far more than she
> worried about Sapphire’s younger brother, a man who had not yet decided on
> a career path and who still, at the age of 34, lived at home in his
> childhood bedroom. But he had people skills, Gwen would say, and with
> people skills there was no end to the things he could do, once he decided
> to do something. For the time being he was content to live with Gwen and
> Albert, his mostly absent father (he claimed he had to travel for work, but
> everyone knew that was a lie), sleep till noon, and play video games for
> ten hours a day. Two, everyone called him, for Albert II, was secretly
> planning on entering the highly competitive and occasionally lucrative
> field of online gaming. It was a secret because he knew people would say he
> was too old, that the best gamers were young and fast and could play for
> days on end, ruining their health. And so he told no one, and since no one
> asked about his plans, it was all okay.
> >
> > Gwen worried about Sapphire because she, Sapphire, went to work every
> day, worked ten hours, then went home, and on weekends she worked on her
> house, or her garden, and she had no friends, except for Melanie, who was,
> as far as Gwen could tell, useless.
> >
> > “I just want you to have a life, baby,” she’d tell Sapphire, and
> Sapphire would reply, “But I have a life.”
> >
> > After reading the advice columns Sapphire dressed for work, wearing her
> usual black pantsuit, and only rarely anymore did her hands shake as she
> buttoned her oxford shirt. Once dressed, once the cat was fed, once the
> morning dishes, a coffee cup and a small plate for her toast, were washed
> and put away, once the living room was set right, which took no time at all
> since Sapphire was always setting it right, and once she could think of no
> other excuses, she would leave her house, out into the world where people
> were unpredictable, where people either could or couldn’t be trusted, and
> how was one to know the difference?
> >
> > This was a question that kept her awake nights. She barely trusted
> Melanie, her supposed best friend, but Sapphire thought that was
> questionable, a matter that was open to interpretation. Occasionally they
> would exchange emails, with Melanie either complaining about her husband or
> gloating about a conquest. Melanie was a confirmed flirt, and while
> Sapphire admired this, she also knew it wasn’t for her. She rarely told
> Melanie anything of substance about herself, because she didn’t trust
> Melanie to not share with her husband or with anyone else, for that matter.
> She certainly didn’t trust Gwen and Albert and never had, not since she was
> four and realized they weren’t being entirely honest about a few things,
> like how Christmas presents arrived so promptly every December 25th and
> where the chocolate eggs came from at Easter. She certainly didn’t trust
> Two, she thought him lazy and unfocused, which he was, but Two didn’t think
> that should count against him.
> >
> > So who could she trust? She barely trusted herself most days.
> >
> > That was the question that made necessary her prescription for Ambien,
> the question that would creep in while she was doing her work, though she
> tried not to think of it. She hoped to find the answer in advice columns,
> but so far they were only adding to her confusion.
> >
> > Monique Colver | May 19, 2015 at 3:56 am | Tags: fiction | Categories:
> Fiction | URL: http://wp.me/pljUz-2o
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