TheBanyanTree: The Advice Reader

[Sally Larwood]

Next episode please. I'm so glad you've started to write again Monique. 

Sal
Sent from my mini iPad

> On 19 May 2015, at 2:09 pm, Monique <monique.colver at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
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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.
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>> It had happened more than once.
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>> 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?”
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>> 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.
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>> 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.
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>> 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.
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>> 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.
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>> 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.
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>> “I just want you to have a life, baby,” she’d tell Sapphire, and Sapphire would reply, “But I have a life.”
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>> 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?
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>> 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.
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>> So who could she trust? She barely trusted herself most days.
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>> 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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