The BADASS Study

(Behavior and Demographics of Actively Sexual Seniors)

by Sue Pace

The old man was hunched over his pill bottles, carefully lining them up to match the printed instructions on the bottom of the shoebox. Vitamins went to the left and the prescription bottles went to the right. “My daughter put this in here so I wouldn’t lose anything,” he said.

Karen noted the contents of previous medications in her case notes:  Statins, blood pressure pills, blood thinners, diuretics. She had listed them all except for the one bottle that was listed in her case notes but not labeled in the shoebox. He’d palmed it and jammed it into his pants pocket. She tried to keep her voice perky and non-judgmental. “I think we’re missing one,” she said.

He sighed and set the bottle on the table between them. There was a butter dish in the center of that table along with matching ceramic salt and pepper shakers and a stand-up napkin holder. There were also toast crumbs and jelly smears and something she hoped was gravy.

“I use this once and awhile,” the old man mumbled. He needed a shave and his smudged trifocals were hooked up to hearing aids. His given name was Joseph Bondurant but, for the purpose of study titled “Behavior and Demographics of Actively Sexual Seniors,” he was simply Respondent 78923. He had signed up for the longitudinal study five years earlier. He’d used Viagra back then, too, but hadn’t been ashamed of it.

“How often is once in awhile?” Karen asked.

“The guy that was here before was older than you,” he said. “It was easier to talk to him about this kind of stuff.”

“Your previous interviewer is… on vacation,” Karen said. She wasn’t actually lying but she was skating a far distance from the truth because the previous interviewer was in the hospital with a heart attack and, logically, probably would use up all his vacation days and might end up on permanent leave but the old man sitting across the table didn’t need to know that.

“I might have exaggerated a bit with him.” Respondent 78923 took a long drink of his coffee.  “I didn’t lie but I might have exaggerated my… my level of desire. The fantasy stuff, you know. I might have inferred I thought about sex a lot more than I do… did.”

“Those questions aren’t included in this version of the study.” Karen tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear and waited, silently. She wasn’t used to long curls and decided that she’d spent way too much money on this wig. “Shall we begin?”

“This study… it’s hard. I’ve told that other interviewer things I don’t even tell my priest.”

“I won’t tell him, either.”

The old man didn’t smile but he nodded. “I’m eighty-five,” he said. “You’d think showing a lady a good time wouldn’t matter so much but it does.”

“You know how this works,” Karen said softly. “I ask some general questions then you put on the headphones and enter your own responses into the computer.”

“I know.”  He nodded and took a long drink of his coffee. “I don’t know why I can’t just do everything online.”

“We need to know that you are the one who is actually responding and not…” Karen paused, trying to think of a nice way to explain the rigors of scientific investigations, but his lined face broke into a smile.

“I suppose they don’t want my computer-savvy grandson putting in that I pork the neighbor’s dog.”

“Exactly!”  She hadn’t meant to giggle but his smile was suddenly genuine and he chuckled and reached for the headphones. He held onto them as they went through the preliminary questions:  Do you smoke?  How much do you drink?  Have you used any other medications besides the ones we’ve already catalogued?

“That last one,” he said. “I tried that medical marijuana for a while.”

Karen looked up from the keyboard. “How long did you take it?”

“A couple weeks. My doctor thought it would help me sleep.”

“Did it?”

“No. It made me dizzy and I kept getting up to puke.”

“Not everyone has the same reaction,” Karen said.

“No kidding!  My grandson loves the stuff but I hated it.”

Karen kept the surprise from her face. At least she hoped she had because she, too, loved medical marijuana. During her chemo and radiation treatments she would come home from the cancer center, sit on the couch at home, and watch the wind dance with the tree tops and ruffle the newly formed leaves outside the living room window. She would finally feel at peace when hummingbirds flitted to the bright bird feeder and the wind chimes sang soft chords reminiscent of the a cappella choir she had joined when she was a soprano, going to college and expecting to live forever.

Now she couldn’t reach the upper notes and her scalp still had bare patches but mostly her hair was growing back. It was lighter than before and so were her eyebrows, but makeup worked wonders. When she was hired as a temp worker—to replace the original field interviewer—she’d worn a wig. Her supervisor didn’t care and Karen had assumed most of the study’s respondents wouldn’t notice. They had their own health problems. But Joseph Bondurant’s expression changed when she brushed back the one lock of wig that clung to her cheek. He looked past Karen to the living room and sighed.  His eyes were wet when he asked, “Can I get you anything?  I think there’s an unopened package of Oreos around here.”

“I’m fine, thank you.”  Karen took out the unlabeled notebook with the show cards inside. Most of the pages were filled with line drawings of sexual positions. It wasn’t the Kama Sutra and it wasn’t a XXX porn show but the drawings were explicit enough to be clear on preferred positions for sexual encounters. What used to be called the missionary position was at the front of the notebook along with the reverse missionary—or female on top. Doggie style, stand ups and table-mates were in the middle and what used to be called 6/9 was toward the end along with positions that only a gymnast could complete. When preparing to take over for the primary field interviewer, Karen and her wife, Jill, had gone rigorously through the show cards, laughing. They had their favorites, of course, but some made Karen wince and others made Jill groan.

“Are we that far behind the tide?” Karen had asked.

“Well, we haven’t actually had a chance to try anything out since….”  Jill didn’t finish the sentence but suddenly stood, pushing the chair back with a screech of wooden legs on the kitchen’s tile floor. She silently put on her jacket and went to drag the garbage cans to the curb and give the dog one last walk along the lakefront.

Karen watched Jill leave then she sighed and jammed the show card booklet into a side pocket of the computer case. Karen couldn’t help this hesitancy to try intimacy without both breasts. Jill didn’t care, that’s what she said anyway, and at night she ran her hand along Karen’s back and hips. But Karen was afraid and that fear kept her from looking in the full length mirror that hung on the closet door. It kept her from asking Jill to help her dry her back when she couldn’t lift her arms the way she had before surgery. It kept her from leaning into a goodnight kiss.

There was the option of implants but the oncologist said to wait until they were sure the cancer wasn’t coming back. “We don’t want it sneaking in behind an implant,” he’d explained. “Give it a year and then decide.”

“What are you afraid of?”  Karen asked herself that when she was in the car, driving to the interviews. Of course there was no one with her to answer that question or to even inquire why, in God’s name, she was doing a study on sexual behavior when she couldn’t seem to access that for herself.

“I need a favor.”  That’s what Dolly, her supervisor had said. “We’re on a time crunch to get some last interviews for the BADASS project and one of our field workers is in the hospital.”

“I’m… things are a little… okay.”  Karen hadn’t meant blurt out that last part. Okay. She didn’t need the money but she did need something to divert her from scanning the internet a hundred times a day looking for more information on the side effects of breast cancer and the probability of it reoccurring someplace else in her body. “Okay,” she repeated. “How many interviews are left?”

“Only four,” Dolly replied. “Two men and two women, all over the age of seventy. The oldest is ninety-one.”

“What about training?”

“No need for that. It’s a simple format. You ask some questions and hand them the computer and headphones. They’ve done this annually for five years and they know they’ll get enough incentive money to feel thanked for their time. They could probably train you.”

“Ship me the supplies,” Karen said, “and I’ll start this weekend.”

Which was how she ended up sitting at a kitchen table, across from a man old enough to be her grandfather, and asking him how many times a week he masturbated.

It was a question he was supposed to answer himself, on the laptop, but he’d taken off the headphones and sighed. “I might need help on this one,” he said, turning the screen to face her. “I’m not sure what they mean by masturbation.”

“It’s whatever it means to you.”

“Even with Viagra, I try but usually can’t get things to the…final…you know.”

The look he gave was a mixture of earnest and embarrassed. “When that other guy was here we decided that masturbation meant finishing the job but I’ve been reading up on it and it could mean just, you know, touching yourself until you get bored. What do you think it means?”

“Let’s look it up,” Karen scooted closer and pressed the F2 button on his laptop. Then she read the pop-up screen. “Masturbation is the sexual stimulation of one’s own genitals for sexual arousal or other sexual pleasure, usually to the point of orgasm.”  She looked up and repeated, “usually to the point of orgasm.”

The old man nodded and took another long drink of coffee. “Okay. I guess the answer is yes.”   He seemed calmer, somehow, as if that admission and her response, neither judgmental nor humorous nor sympathetic, was what he needed.

He put his headphones back on. “I think I can finish the rest of this on my own.”

When the interview was completed, Karen packed up the laptop and show cards and followed him to the door. “Thank you,” she said and held out out her hand.

Respondent 78923 didn’t shake hands. He shoved the incentive money into his pants pocket, took her wrist and pulled her into a long hug. “You’ll be okay,” he whispered. “You’re a nice lady and I’m sure you’ve got people who love you. Don’t let it win, okay?”

The second interview was with a seventy-three-year-old woman who was still in her housecoat. She had a Romance paperback in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Three cats waited on the back of the couch and two kittens wrestled a tennis ball back and forth under the kitchen table.

“May I speak with Carly Beth Andrews?” Karen asked.

“That’s me.”

“I’m here about the….”  Karen didn’t want to use the acronym but Respondent 10246 interrupted her just in time.

“This is for that BADASS thing. I thought I’d been cancelled,” she said. “I was told that other guy couldn’t make it.”

“If you’d like, I can come back another time,” Karen said.

“Nope, let’s get this shit done.”

They sat in the living room with the computer on the coffee table and the television blaring in the background. Carly Beth Andrews muted the audio of a program Karen had never watched. There appeared to be a screaming audience and angry participants. After the initial questions, Carly Beth put on the headphones and began tapping her responses while Karen stifled her yawns and wished she had more medicinal marijuana, but the doctor had said tapering off would be good. At least until they knew how things were really going. When Carly Beth picked up the show card booklet, she carefully examined each of the drawings. Her mouth twitched into what could have been a smile or could have been a repressed frown. “I’ve never tried this one,” she said and turned the drawing to face Karen. “Have you?”

“Have I what?” Karen asked.

“Have you tried this one?”

Karen kept her voice neutral and, she hoped, gentle and accepting. “This survey isn’t about me. It is about you.”

“That other interviewer wouldn’t answer me, either. You interviewers must have really boring lives.”

Karen turned the show cards so they again faced the woman sitting across from her. “It’s about you,” she repeated.

Carly Beth sighed and went back to pecking out her responses on the laptop. Karen stared at her own clasped hands and stifled the giggles she felt rising. She and Jill had tried that exact position ten years ago, when they were on vacation and bored with hotel swimming pools. Jill had gotten a cramp in her side because she couldn’t stop laughing. They had spent the rest of the week with ice packs, small bottles of hotel booze, and game show re-runs on television. They still couldn’t watch Jeopardy! without giving each other sly looks.

“How come they don’t ask about costumes?” Carly Beth asked.

“Costumes?”

“This one guy I was dating awhile ago only wanted to do it if I wore a pantsuit and he wore a Donald Trump mask.”

Karen kept her head down and said in a voice she hoped was neutral, “You can always type in your own comments. Just Press F4.”

“Or maybe he wanted me in the Trump mask,” Carly Beth muttered. “What the hell, I’ll put them both down.”  She shifted her gaze from the screen to Karen. “I’ve been having some memory issues lately.”

Karen reached for the vitamin water she’d brought, uncapped it, and drank slowly. She put the bottle into the side pocket of the computer case and typed “memory issues mentioned at QSP13” into her iPhone. The techies would look at that sequence of questions and decide if the answers were valid and could be included in the overall data. Karen wished, mightily, that she could be in the room when that happened. Whatever their politics, the techies would have enjoyed the costume comments.

“Okay,” Carly Beth took off the headphones. “I guess that’s everything.”

Karen took back the laptop and entered the closing codes, thanked the woman for her time and carefully counted out the incentive money.

“Are you coming back next year?”

Karen felt exhaustion creeping into her bones and her hands shook as she zipped the computer case closed and shrugged into her jacket. “I’m just helping the interviewer you usually see.”

Respondent 10246 lit up another cigarette and looked at Karen with a stare that was a little too long. “I hope you get better,” she finally said, “you seem really nice.”

Karen opened her mouth to speak but no words came out and the woman’s cell phone suddenly blared a disco song. The door slowly swung closed, leaving Karen to trudge to her car and dump everything into the trunk.

It was time for her medicine. It wasn’t supposed to be taken on an empty stomach so she drove to the coffee shop where the baristas knew her well enough to start a single shot almond coconut latte (no whip, no nutmeg) the minute they saw her sedan pull into the drive-through lane. After collecting the aromatic cup of sweet goodness, Karen drove toward the far end of the county park where she could see rising mountains to the north and and lapping tides to the south—both without the interference of foot traffic or bicyclists. The glove compartment held maps, cough drops, car registration, soda crackers, her medication, and a small packet of prescription cannabis, hand-rolled into ultra small joints.  Jill had taken care to weigh and measure each one to be sure she wasn’t overdosing. “No weed,” Karen often told herself. “Not when I’m working.”

Jill called it pot but Karen called it weed. The young people at the clinic where she picked up her prescription called it endo and the pharmacist behind the counter called it THC, CBD or sometimes just combination medical cannabis. Karen believed it didn’t matter what anyone called it because sometimes, in the middle of the day when the nausea and pain were too great, she would drive to her favorite ocean overlook to watch the waves froth and lap at the rocky shore while inhaling the one thing that seemed to calm her. One tiny joint, six or seven puffs, was all she needed. She wanted more but Jill kept track of how much she used.

“I don’t want you to drive if you’re zonked,” she said every time Karen left the house. “You can always call me and I’ll come get you.”

“I love you,” Karen said as she automatically stepped away from Jill’s hug. Instead, she smiled, blew a kiss, and pressed the switch to the garage door. She backed the car out carefully, missing Jill’s trail bike and the garbage and recycling cans lined up along the driveway.

She would tap out a good-bye beep on the horn and drive away. As she moved through that sequence, she wished she had a blunt the size of a Cuban cigar.

Driving north, away from the respondent who couldn’t remember who wore the Donald Trump mask while having sex, Karen concentrated on the thinning traffic. The overlook’s parking area was filled with dump trucks and paving gear. The sky was blue but the air was murky and the smell of asphalt cut like acid, so she kept driving. There was a beach road farther north and she had plenty of battery power in the Leaf she was leasing. That was another thing Jill was good at: keeping the windshield clean and the little car plugged in every night when she pulled into the garage.

“If you insist on working,” Jill said, “I insist on keeping you as safe as I can.”

It was Jill’s attempt to control the situation, to fight the cancer and suppress her fear. Karen understood that so she let Jill roll the tiny joints and fix her lunch and send her a “How’s it going?” text every hour or so.

She would also text, “Fish and Chips for dinner.” or “Your sister called. She’ll call back tonight.”

Jill was an art instructor at the community college, but that didn’t mean she liked cartoons, emojis, and emoticons. She used punctuation and spelled things out. The first time Karen sent luv u 2 with a semi colon and a closing parenthesis, it took Jill an hour to figure out what she meant.

She always wanted to know Karen’s schedule and every morning would ask for specifics.

The Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services was very strict about keeping the confidence of their respondents. Karen could only say, “I’ll be in downtown Seattle” or “I’ll be taking a lot of ferry rides today.”

Even though she wanted to, she couldn’t say “Unit two of the duplex on the corner of Admiralty Way and Seneca is where Respondent 12370 lives and he’s a drunken asshole. His name is Barry Westergard and he is so paranoid he answers the door with his .38 Special cocked and ready.”  Karen knew it was a .38 Special because the previous interviewer had engaged the guy in a conversation about gun rights and cheap places to get ammo. But that was two years ago and Karen’s supervisor told her to avoid the place. “We’ll catch him next time around.”

Karen understood her supervisor’s concern but sometimes, after a sleepless night, when her mind was cloudy with medication and weed, she fantasized about knocking on the man’s door and waiting for a series of bullets to take away the pain and nausea and her fear of the future.

Karen pulled off the highway and ground her way along the sandy beach road. Coming between the dunes was the sound of a slow, slopping tide. Weathered signs that forbade camping, dumping trash, and off-season fishing obstructed any view. She rolled down her window to smell the salty air and parked between the battered portable toilet and a blue SUV. She slipped off her shoes, stepped onto the damp sand, and headed toward the waves. As an afterthought, she beeped closed the locks of the little Leaf.

A family of four was flying kites. Their laughter and shouts rose and fell like discordant music but they were too far down the beach to show ages or genders or even their race. None of that mattered, Karen told herself, but she knew she couldn’t light up in front of them. She sighed and walked away from the lapping waves, heading toward a higher dune with its scrubby trees and acres of reeds. The driftwood was piled high there and signs of old campfires stained the pale wood a crumbling combination of black and gray. Plastic bottles and crushed tin cans littered the ground and grocery bags clung to the reeds and logs. The wind had picked up and the sand was shifting, ever so slightly, in an almost human effort to bury the dross and hide the evidence.

Karen shivered and pulled her coat close. She sat on a bleached log and watched the little family fight the rising wind and heard their shrieks of joy when the kites suddenly rose higher and higher, into the sky. For that kind of beauty, there had to be a wind, Karen thought. There had to be the firm hand below and the tension of the string. All of that was necessary for the rainbow colored kites to lift into the air and look as if they were suddenly free and dancing. Free and dancing, she thought. But without the tension and the firm hand and the troublesome wind, the kite would simply flutter to earth.

Jill was the firm hand, Karen thought, and cancer was the unremitting wind that raged and wafted and paused and pushed. She yanked off her wig and let the wind press against her face and head. Even the sting of sand didn’t cause her to turn her back and light up one of the joints in her pocket. She focused, instead, on the bright, bobbing kites. There were three of them now. Red. Blue. Yellow. The bright patches of color crisscrossed the sky, creating a palette of color against the flat gray of clouds and sea. She watched the dancing kites and the family grow smaller and smaller as they let the tension of the wind pull them further and further down the beach until they were, finally, out of sight. Then she went back to her car and drove to the final interview:  Respondent 0784.

“She fought it for twenty years,” the homecare worker had said. “She thought she’d won, but cancer is sneaky and it came back.”

“I’m so sorry,” Karen managed. She hoped her voice didn’t reveal the panic she felt.

The smell of urine and feces wafted out the front door. “I’m in the middle of changing her,” the homecare worker said. “Did you want to come in?”

“No need. I’ll let my supervisor know that… about the… situation.”  Karen kept her eyes on her lap. “How long does she have?”

The homecare worker spoke with an accent. British with overtones of somewhere else. She shrugged and stepped onto the porch, pulling the door partially closed behind her. “The doctor, he say three months at the most but my boss, she say maybe only two.”

“You have a hard job,” Karen whispered.

The woman didn’t answer. Her gaze took in Karen’s black wig, pale complexion, and the dark circles under her eyes. “It’s all in God’s hands,” the woman said.

Karen didn’t believe that, she couldn’t afford to believe it, but she had nodded and whispered, “Thank you for your time.”

When she walked through the front door, Jill had asked about her day. Karen burst into tears and headed for the kitchen. The weed was in a canister over the refrigerator and Jill carefully measured and rolled two regular-sized joints. They sat together on the back deck watching treetops frothing in the wind lit by a moon that came and went behind scudding clouds. Neither said anything but later, when the wind died down and the air went from cool to cold, Jill helped her upstairs, stripped off her clothes and they lay together, naked under the sheet, watching a Netflix movie about pirates. They laughed at all the bad jokes and ate ice cream and she almost let Jill caress her. Almost.

That was a week ago and now Karen sat in front of the same brick townhouse. The dying respondent had called the main office, asking for an appointment, and Karen’s supervisor had agreed. “Give it a try,” she said to Karen. It was their weekly conference call. “If it doesn’t work then you can walk away, but the woman seemed really anxious to participate. The study seems to mean a lot to her. I’d hate to have her exuded just because she’s in hospice. I mean, the study is about the past year and not the past week.”

“I… okay,” Karen had replied. “Okay.”

The same hospice caretaker met her at the door. The house smelled of air freshener and lemons. “If you want coffee,” the woman said, “I could make us a pot while you set up. I’ve moved the hospital tray table closer to her bed and she’s ready to go.”

The respondent was bald but wearing mascara, lipstick and earrings. Her robe was the bright blue of a summer day and seemed to soften the effect of her jaundiced skin. Her fingernails were blue and green with a Seahawks logo at the very tips. Karen tried to repress her snicker but the sputter of it escaped.

“You’re not a fan?” the respondent asked.

“No, but my wife is. She would love it if I had a Seahawks manicure.”

“I won’t live long enough to see next year’s Super Bowl,” the respondent said, “but I can cheer them on from heaven or hell. Whichever works best.”

“Gallows humor?” Karen asked. The words were out before she knew it and her face flushed red with shame, but the respondent smiled.

“I see you are familiar with the concept.”

Karen nodded and set the computer on the tray table and swung it over the bed. The caretaker placed the headphones on the respondent’s bald head and adjusted the laptop screen.

“Thank you, Sharika,” the respondent said. “I’ll be fine.”

“She tries to be tough but ring the bell if it look like she need me.” The caretaker handed Karen a small silver hand bell, the kind found in symphony orchestras and church choirs.

After Sharika closed the kitchen door the sound of music, rhythmic and muffled, could be heard. Also murmurs and laughter.

“She’s talking with her daughter in Canada.”  The respondent’s hand was bones and yellow parchment and it shook with exhaustion. “I don’t know how she manages this job and sends money to a family that can’t get into the country. I’d be crying all the time if it was me stuck with all that horror.”

“But you are already stuck in horror,” Karen whispered. The pause was long enough to be awkward for both of them. “I… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean….”

“I’ve made peace with it.”  The woman’s mouth quivered but her eyes were fierce. “At least I’m trying to make peace with it and it looks like you’re trying, too. Anyway, this interview is my swan song and I don’t want to die until I get through all the sex questions. I’m particularly looking forward to illustration number 27.”

“More gallows humor?”

“Hopefully.”

It took twice as long to get through the questions because each page made the respondent smile and sometimes laugh. Halfway through she fell asleep. Karen yelled and grabbed for the hand bell but Sharika was already there, bending over her patient and checking her breathing. She put a gentle hand on Karen’s arm. “It okay. She double up on her meds for your meeting. She in pain but not want to miss it. Let her sleep a bit and she come awake.”

“I think I will take that cup of coffee,” Karen said. “If you don’t mind.”

“Come.”

Karen followed Sharika into a spotless kitchen. The table was in a corner bracketed by windows facing the back yard. Rose bushes brushed against the glass and sunlight slanted in a way that left half of the table in shadow. The two women did not sit on the wooden chairs. Instead, they stood at the counter, opposite the open kitchen door, holding steaming mugs of coffee and waiting for the jangle of the hand bell resting beside respondent 0784.

“She’s lucky to have you,” Karen said. “Do you have other hospice patients?”

“No. My boss have more work for me but I will leave after this one pass.”

“Leave?”

“I go to Canada.” The caretaker did not look at Karen but stared at the pink rose floribunda bobbing and scraping outside the window panes. “Many in this country want help with their dying ones. This is third year for me and I hoped to stay but I no longer feel safe here.”

“I-I’m sorry.”

“Maybe Canada better.”

Karen sipped the fragrant coffee, grateful for the diversion. The two women, each lost in her own thoughts, did not speak until the soft clinking sound of the bell could be heard

“Thank you,” Karen put her cup in the sink. “I hope things work out for you.”

“And for you, also.”  Sharika turned from the dancing blossoms. “How much longer do you think?” Karen flushed red and stuttered to answer but the caretaker smiled. “How much longer will you be with my lady?”

“Oh. Of course.”  Karen glanced at her watch. “Maybe fifteen minutes but probably less.”

“Good. She need to drink something. She not always keep it down so she not drink before you come.”

“Hydration is important,” Karen thought of her own bottles of vitamin water in the car. Jill would check the levels and get after her if it wasn’t all gone. Of course she could pour it into the street or even give it away but she’d promised she wouldn’t lie. “You may not like my choices,” she had said, back in the beginning of it all, “but I won’t lie.”

After Respondent 0784 woke from the short nap, she finished the pages of sexual positions and handed the show card booklet back to Karen. “I was always pretty basic when it came to love,” she said. “I do regret not trying some of these out.”

Karen couldn’t think of anything neutral to say so she said nothing.

“I mean, some of that stuff is pretty silly but I gave up on the whole thing way too soon. Once I got my diagnosis, I just refused to play around at all. I was sure I’d die and I spent the last ten years not living. I think that’s why my husband left.” Her voice quivered. “Don’t make the same mistake I did. If somebody loves you, love them back.”

Then she said, “I’m done.” And closed her eyes. The soft put-putter of a snore began.

Karen left the incentive envelope on the hospital tray table and checked her phone. Jill had texted a message. “Let’s go out for dinner. We can try that new Thai place.” The smell of coffee still filled the air and another smell, that of urine, was suddenly strong.

Karen let herself out, softly closing the front door. Sharika was watering the roses. Behind her another fountain of water sprinkled the newly cut lawn. “You finished?”

Karen nodded.

“You matter today,” Sharika said. “She stay alive for you because she know it important.”

“I’m glad it was important for her.”

“It should be important for you also. Every day I say to my Lord, thank you for this life. Help me to make it matter that I am here.”

“You’re very brave.”  Karen watched the rainbow of droplets as the sprinkler system spurted rhythmically over green grass and cement sidewalk.

“I got no choice but to be brave,” the caretaker said. “This life what I was given and I not stopping until the very end.”

“She’s sleeping,” Karen said. “There’s money on the tray table.”

“The other reason she do this thing is to give me that money. She say to me, she can’t use it and I should.”

“That’s between you and her,” Karen said. “I – I hope things work out for you and your family.”

Sharika plucked a rose from the bush by the front porch and handed it to Karen. “It is a peace rose,” she said. “May you find your peace.”

“May we all,” Karen said. At least she hoped that’s what the garbled sob sounded like. She got into the battery-powered Leaf and drove toward her home. It was a place of safety and unremitting love. Fear dwelt in the dark corners of her mind but there was bright laughter and quiet contentment and a patient wife texting her. Let’s go out for dinner. We can try that new Thai place.

Karen had spent the day listening to people who had lost the life they once loved. Nevertheless, she felt almost happy to be alive. Karen pulled onto the shoulder of the road and pulled out her phone. Let’s stay home. I think we should try Position 18 from the show cards. She didn’t wait for the “bing” of the reply. She already knew what Jill’s answer would be.

Sue Pace’s prose, poetry and personal essays have been published in Australia, the UK and the USA. She was born and raised in rural Washington State but has lived north of Seattle for decades. Her collection of related short stories, Driving Sharon Crazy, is available through Amazon.

Judge: Kathleen Alcalá is the author of six books, including Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist (CALYX) and The Deepest Roots (University of Washington Press). A founding editor of The Raven Chronicles, she is a member of the Opata Nation and teaches creative writing in the Pacific Northwest.