Bridge to Happiness by Jill Barnett

Author:Jill Barnett [Barnett, Jill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Fiction
ISBN: 9781935661832
Publisher: BelleBooks
Published: 2010-12-31T06:00:00+00:00

I sat on the overstuffed sofa in the media room where it was fairly dark and pretty much impossible to read the three grief books gathering dust on the floor next to me. Around me the walls were lined with framed posters of Mike’s favorite movies. Jaws. The Godfather. Apocalypse Now. Star Trek. Last of the Mohicans.

Last of the Mohicans. For three and half decades I had loved a man who was never embarrassed about his romantic side. He’d played the sound track in his car for months after we saw the movie. I stuffed a handful of crackers in my mouth.

Barefooted, feet on an ottoman, a crushed box of Wheat Thins hugged to my chest, I sat there with the television on, wearing red sweats with the Cantrell campaign slogan from ten years ago, and the thought came to me that I might have slept in them. I sniffed my underarm. Baby powder. Maybe I had changed clothes today after all. The polish on my toenails was chipping off. I flexed my feet, toes splayed. One big toenail, once wearing a solid dark red coat of a color called Not in Kansas Anymore, was now polished in the shape of—I studied it for a minute—Idaho.

Once and always I was the daughter of a geography and math teacher. My father would have been proud that I could still, in my fifties, identify the states by shape alone.

I leaned my head back and stared at the green recessed ceiling. Idaho. The Gem State. Capital? Boise. Highest peak? Mount Borah. Lowest point? The Snake River. Home of the deepest gorge in North America: Hell’s Canyon.

I’m there now.

Chewing on another handful of wheat crackers made me feel better. Mindless eating was like mindless living, like mindless existence. The thin foil liner inside the box tore. When did they stop using waxed paper? I felt suddenly older than dirt.

On the TV screen a man was walking across a pristine, stainless steel factory. They panned to a close-up of a conveyor belt spilling peanuts into a dark vat of caramelized sugar, making me hungry again.

Five boxes of Wheat Thins in three days. Staring into the dark recesses of box number six, I swallowed, thinking some honey-nut peanut butter (lately I kept a spoon near the jar) would be good to dip them in, maybe chase it all with a shot of Herradura.

But then I would have get up, pull out the silver and blue tequila bottle from the bar cabinet across the room, get out the cutting board, find a lime, and the salt . . .

Way too much work. Besides, wasn’t drinking alone supposed to be dangerous?

So I lost myself in afternoon programming, living inside the big screen, rectangular, HDTV (the one that in full screen mode made everyone look like dwarves.) “Sneezy, Happy, Grumpy, Sleepy, Doc, Droopy,” I recited. “No . . . Droopy was a dog.”

Flashing across the screen was a line of bright red words: Attention women between the ages of 18 and 65.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.