TheBanyanTree: The Advice Reader

[Gail Richards]

I just read this this morning.  You've done it again!!!  Sucked me in.  Made 
me want to know more.  Told me just enough...then left me wanting more!!

-----Original Message----- 
From: Monique
Sent: Monday, May 18, 2015 9:09 PM
To: Banyan Tree
Subject: TheBanyanTree: The Advice Reader


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> 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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