Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 83 - Saccharine

PART VI - BACK AND FORTH

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PART VI - Back and Forth

It was 1980, in the springtime, and Becca had taken to drinking tea - Darjeeling, dark and bitter — instead of coffee. Before that, coffee had been a replacement to help her stop drinking Tab soda, which she loved, but her dentist had staunchly admonished her that the saccharin would rot her insides in a way far worse than sugar would rot her teeth.

“Drink coffee if you have to drink something,” Dr. Stephens had told her as he bent over, poking at the enamel in her mouth. “But that saccharin stuff will cause cancer in lab rats.”

His breath was cigarette tobacco masked with peppermints, stale and permeated.

“That’s just a myth,” Becca had protested.

“Diabetes, too,” Dr. Stephens responded, ignoring her protests. “Your intestines can’t absorb the saccharin, but because it’s sweet, your body shoots off an endocrinological response, and your pancreas will start popping out extra insulin.”

“And that’s bad?”

She was an astrophysicist with little interest in biology.

“Insulin gets sugar to your bloodstream for energy,” Dr. Stephens explained. “You use those artificial sweeteners, and insulin can’t hold on. Boom. Diabetes.”

“No offense,” Becca said. “But for a dentist, you know an awful lot about this.”

“My wife is as fat as a pill bug,” he answered matter-of-factly. “Riddled with diabetes. Probably have to cut off her leg because of the crap she shoves in her trap.”

“Oh.”

“Drink coffee.”

“But won’t coffee make my teeth yellow?” she’d asked. Dr. Stephens had yellow teeth. He grimaced, letting her know he was nearly done with her protestations.

“I drink three cups every morning,” he’d said. “And you can always brush your teeth. You don’t want to be drinking that saccharine stuff, though. Huge problems. But do what you want. What’s it to me?”

She switched to coffee and drank more of it than she ever did of soda. She then couldn’t sleep anymore, struggling to fall asleep any earlier than one o’clock in the morning and often pouring out of bed just a couple of hours later. So she disparagingly weened herself onto tea while desperately missing the coffee and still craving Tab.

Then, on an afternoon drenched and shadowed by grey clouds, wet and sloppy streets as cabs zipped by, seemingly avoiding mid-day fares with the greatest intentionality, she’d had enough of Darjeeling, enough of the ridiculous discipline of not getting what she wanted. If she couldn’t have a Tab, she was going to have a damn cup of coffee.

As she rounded a corner, a surprisingly dense line of trench-coated patrons huddled — easily twenty people deep — under black umbrellas, dripping like waterspouts from the increasing threat of rain that steadily grew with all the trappings of a substantial pending thunderstorm.

“Is this a cafe?” she’d asked a man at the back of the line who also found himself in the rain without an umbrella. He held instead a copy of Time Magazine over his head, the painted image of Ronald Reagan on the cover and the yellow headline - Ronnie’s Romp! - looking warped and melted from the rain beating upon them all.

“Bakery,” the man said. “Dinkel’s.”

“They have coffee?”

“Oh, excellent coffee,” the man said, smiling broadly. “But it’s their Danish that’s incredible. Gotta get a Danish.”

“Any particular kind?”

He was slightly taller than Becca, with a square jaw and well-trimmed sideburns, a dark mustache that seemed pasted on like a costume piece, out of place on his face.

“Just whatever is special today,” he said. “Just go with what they’ve got.”

“It’s quite a line.”

“What?” the man said, feigning offense. “That’s not a line. That’s the truth. You can never go wrong with the special.”

“No, not what you said,” Becca replied, laughing. “I mean the actual line of people — in the rain, no less.”

The man turned his head to the crowd of umbrella-covered people ahead of him. His cheeks reddened, and his ears, too.

“Hah,” he said. “What a fool am I!”

A small contingent of customers relinquished their seats inside and scrambled to open their umbrellas as they stepped into the rain. They smiled at each other as the line suddenly jumped ahead several spaces.

“I’m Frankie,” he’d told her and extended his hand, the magazine slopping more over the side of his face.

She took his hand into hers and was surprised at its warmth. Her own hand was chilled and pruning.

“Ah, screw this,” he said, taking the waterlogged magazine and slapping it into a nearby trashcan. “I’m already drenched. What good will that do?”

Then, they were pushed tight against each other through the door amidst the crowd, placing their orders.

“What’ll you have?” Frankie asked her. “It’s on me, as thanks for the good company.”

She liked to think of herself as methodical, calculating, precise, and unemotional, but she knew that was a lie.

The truth was, and she was quickly getting to a place — albeit after far too many years — where she was prepared to admit that she was selfish, self-centered, and often wholly irrational.

She found herself that evening in his arms.

When she asked him how long he’d had a mustache, Frankie responded, “Just long enough to know I look ridiculous.”

Then, he went into the bathroom and walked out about ten minutes later, clean-shaven.

“Better?” he’d asked, and somehow it was, the sharpness of his jawline more accented now without the distraction of the haphazard and uneven clump of hair upon his top lip. But it wasn’t just that he shaved, that she could see the completeness of his face now, but that he somehow knew instinctively that she hadn’t cared for the mustache, even after such a short time of knowing her, and it was for that reason that he’d shaven it off.

For her.

It was two days later — again entirely spontaneously, and the word spontaneous doesn’t begin to describe the unconstrained act of impetuousness — when she found herself in her hastily purchased cream dress and he in his charcoal suit, standing outside the courthouse, fingers intertwined, as if passion was enough for anything lasting. Yet somehow, they managed to stay in each other’s lives for the next forty-five years. He’d been with her through a series of steadily increasing stupid and hasty decisions. He was there through completing her studies, her doctorate, and quick ascension within the ranks of ENH’s secretive organizational chart. He was there early on when her work seemed so important, as was his, yet Frankie was always willing to step out early from the office, make an excuse for his absence for her benefit, and be there when she needed him and wanted him. She always admired him — loved him — for his willingness to be there for her, yet she struggled to understand why she was never able or willing or even close to desiring the need to be so flexible and available to him.

She knew he’d always be there, even if she weren’t there herself.

For these reasons and more, she’d always known that expeditiously marrying Frankie had been anything but stupid, anything other than a perfectly made decision, no matter how hastily made. It was the best decision of her life. Still, every decision that followed was just a part of a steadily growing tower of bad choices that would eventually topple upon itself and eradicate the best good she’d ever known or experienced. But there would always be that one good decision — that singular joyous moment with Frankie at the center.

She once had the best thing anyone could ever want, yet it was as if she was determined to sabotage it all, light it up like a blowtorch, and burn it all away.

Through it all was her haste, imprudence, pride, and her, her, her, me, me, me, and what she wanted, what she thought she needed.

She thought of the Pomeranians again. She’d bought them hastily, but he’d cared for them. Wasn’t that how it always worked with them?

Frankie was the one who always cared for her, cared for everything, and she was the one who always threw it all away.

And now, somehow, back in 1986, just over six years from when she originally met her husband — the only one who ever really loved her, foibles and all — she found herself in the very place where she’d intentionally sought after her own endeavors, her own desires, her own goals and ambitions time and time again. ENH. Here and now and once again.

And here she was once more, watching as a black hole — brought to life, as suspected, by the sudden influx of electrical surges from random laboratory equipment shocked to life all at once — pulsed with sine-like waves, oscillating on the edges, spinning slowly in a clockwise circle. It was now quickly the size of a basketball and inflating with size with each ticking second.

“Stupid woman,” she uttered to herself, thinking not of the black hole before her but of the one she’d made of her life and all that she’d wastefully tossed aside in lieu of ambition. “Oh, you stupid, stupid woman.”

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