Did it All Start in Third Grade?

A peculiarly funny take on serious stuff.

Note: This story makes reference (very briefly) to a potential date rape situation. I am not sure of the protocol for warning those sensitive to this sort of trigger, but please be aware. Also, this semi-true story is set a time long gone - please do not hold my era of reference against me. All in all, the POV is intended to make you smile and feel Louise’s sense of triumph…especially at the end.

Louise wandered down to the 24-hour Stop and Shop on a whim at 2am on a Tuesday night in mid-October. At twenty-four years old, she knew bad things happen to good people who make poor life choices…but where to begin…how to ferret out that first bad choice that started her on a downward spiral leading to the Stop and Shop liquor aisle at 2am on a Tuesday?

Was it that time in third grade at St. Margaret Mary’s when she washed Fred Reed’s pimply face with a combination of snow, ice and gravel while holding him down in the school parking lot because he said, “That dress is so short I can see your p****y!” The dress’s hem touched her knees as was required, though she did experience a growth spurt and it might have been a tad short.

There had been other minor transgressions in her young life. But this one earned her a trip to the principal’s office with her mother in attendance, six weeks’ worth of detentions, a good old-fashioned switching from her father, and Fred’s mother, who happened to be their next-door neighbor, no longer offered her, “How you doing, sweetie?” whenever she saw Louise.

With no conscious intent, Louise’s fingers wrapped around a bottle of Absolut vodka and clutched it tightly.

She remembered going to the Harvest Moon dance with Fred in high school. Her mother said she needed to atone for what she did to him in third grade by asking him to go with her. Louise was always doing penance for something, now she had to add a seven-year-old transgression to her list of things to atone for (hadn’t she already paid enough on this one?)

Once she consented to go to the dance with Fred, Fred’s mother (who had been busily guilting Louise’s mother) must have felt just deserts had been served because she began again with that “How you doing, sweetie?”

Louise thought it might be her conscience that caused Fred’s facial injuries to seem so pronounced. He was an obsequious little twit, kind of like Edie Haskell on those old re-runs– so good when adults were around but not so much when they weren’t. She never liked Fred, but after the face washing in the parking lot, she especially didn’t like to look at him.

Over the years of knowing Fred’s family, she saw that he and his mother were very good at playing the pity card on vulnerable people-pleasers (of which Louise’s mother was one). The two of them wielded pity cards like battle axes felling victim after victim. People avoided them on the street, and they were rarely included in neighborhood parties; Fred and his mom were the consummate Debbie Downers, always ready with a wet blanket to throw on any happy occasion. Louise was loathe to acknowledge that since she allowed herself to be brow beaten into asking Fred to the Harvest Moon dance, she too had been felled by one of their pity-card attacks.

So, Louise went to the dance with the boy no one liked, and endured snickers from her frenemies as she danced with him under dramatically pulsating and shifting lights that only occasionally revealed the cratered scars and peculiar outcroppings ever present on his face (they weren’t that bad, really, not that bad).

As she recalled Fred having to take massive doses of antibiotics for many months after a secondary infection set in, her little voice of reason piped up, “The kid already had a thriving community of blackheads and severe nodulocystic acne - you are not entirely to blame…”

Did this mean her damned voice of reason believed she was partially to blame?!

After the official dance was over, Fred produced from under the driver’s seat of his car a full bottle of Absolut vodka and suggested they celebrate their reconciliation (WTF! They were never friends, nor would they ever be friends). But instead of going to the After Party (where his face would be aglow in all its glory under the harsh lights of the gym, and her conscience would run amok), Louise agreed to drive to the local park to drink the Absolut which she had told everyone was her favorite alcoholic beverage (all she really had to compare it with was her Grandma’s Lydia Pinkham).

As they drank, the streetlights of the park shone in the window and each dip and rise on Fred’s face took on mammoth proportions (there was no way those tiny scars should look so heinous)!

Louise tried not to look at his dented and banged up countenance (which rivaled the ones on the old jalopy he drove). She told herself the seeming severity was only a figment of her imagination that was in cahoots with her over-active conscience …still, she felt a growing guilt.

After the vodka was half drunk and she and Fred were fully drunk, Fred said something about her owing him payment for what she had done in third grade. He turned into the proverbial octopus that her more experienced girlfriends had told her about from their dates, and she had to fend him off.

When his adolescent fumbling and mild coercion was unsuccessful, Fred turned his sallow, haggard face upon her. As she stared at the strange nooks and crannies under the glare of those abysmal park lights, Fred Reed made a move that would make his momma proud; he dealt with alacrity his strongest pity card. Louise must make up for her sin against him and his ravaged face by consenting to have intercourse. Yes, the dolt actually used the word intercourse.

It was then she bashed him in the nose with what was left of the Absolut.

Back in the Stop and Shop, a strange apparition appeared out of nowhere.

The arrival of this peculiarity interrupted Louise’s trip down memory lane, and she could see at once, it was a little old lady who appeared to be a nun. If she were not so old, Louise would have suspected her of wearing a Halloween costume (you know, the sexy nurse, sexy teacher and sexy nun get ups), but this one was not at all sexy, which meant she had to be the real deal.

Her ancient face was pulled tight with the veil and coif so that nary a strand of hair could be seen. She floated effortlessly (the heavenly magic of the old-style habits allowed this).

She moved steadily toward Louise, as her cart creaked and her arms shook as though she bore a heavy load. The cart’s basket was full of something Louise could not make out.

How peculiar I must look she thought, as she stood staring with her mouth open and clutching that bottle of Absolut. She didn’t even like Absolut after that fateful night in high school so why was she holding it now at 2 am on a Tuesday night in the Stop and Shop?

Her mind went back to the facial she gave Fred in the parking lot, then to the Harvest Moon night she broke his nose. Fred had two black-yes and a crooked schnoz that never quite straightened to its original proportions after that to add to his to his list of attributes (she wasn’t a psychopath, really, she felt quite terrible about all of it)!

Louise casually glanced down and quickly perused the items in Sister Shakey’s cart as she approached. To her utter amazement, it was full of…it was full of…Louise dipped her head closer to confirm what she thought it was full of.

Massengill douche.

She was confused on many levels as anyone would be who had inadvertently stepped into the theater of the absurd. She felt it necessary to repeat to herself the facts as she understood them to be. Her words immediately sounded like the beginning of a bad joke with a silly punchline, “A nun walks into a Stop and Shop at 2am on a Tuesday night to…purchase a sh*t load of Massengill…”.

Wait. Was that “Extra Cleansing Tropical Breeze” Massengill? Yep, sure enough, it was. The labels on the boxes she could read at the top of the considerable pile in the cart said just that.

Louise had attended Catholic schools most of her young life and had believed that certain female bits, passions and desires were forfeited by women who were called to the life. Of course, as an adult she knew this was not the case, yet this acknowledgement did not include the possibility of a nun hauling around a case (at least) of Massengill douche in her shopping cart at 2am on a mid-October Tuesday in the Shop and Shop.

She tried to find some logic in the alternate universe she was inhabiting alongside Sister Shakey just as the little nun stopped in front of her and frowned with disapproval at the Absolut vodka Louise was still clutching in her right hand.

WTF!?

What nerve Sister Shakey had to judge her. She, a freaking nun with a cart full of Masengill intended to remedy God knows what sort of catastrophic emergency female gynecological event!

As their eyes met, Louise defiantly stared at the Masengill. Sister Shakey accusingly glared at the bottle of Absolut.

No one spoke a word yet there was a mutually uneasy understanding of some level of transgression. The nasty Absolut spoke in no uncertain terms about Louise’s current state of sinful choices and intent (but picking up the Absolut was not a conscious choice, for God’s sake, she didn’t intend to have it in her hand any more than she intended to scar Fred for life). But the Masengill, though superficially damning, had no logical explanation or traceable culpability to Sister Shakey. Louise knew that in the great courtroom of the Universe, she would not come out ahead against a nun, no matter how strange or unexplainable the baggage was that the nun toted around.

The stare-down continued to the point of ridiculousness and Louise felt herself growing more and more uncomfortable. Something about this woman was familiar. Very familiar.

St. Margaret Mary’s: attended first through fifth grade before transferring to Sacred Heart because her mother was fed-up with Louise always getting into trouble. That face belonged to Sister Meldrida!

A donning recollection of witnesses called to verify the debacle which caused Fred to undergo several months of antibiotic treatments and left him with a ravaged face, exhumed the buried memory of this nun. Sister Meldrida. Though not one of Louise’s teachers, she was the star witness to the impromptu facial scrub in the parking lot.

But worse, way worse than this realization was another far more upsetting one; Sister Meldrida was friends with her mother. Louise had not seen the sister since shortly after the incident, but somehow, Sister Meldrida and her mother had bonded and maintained a relationship over the years.

Louise had to get the hell out of this place before Sister Meldrida remembered who she was and reported it to her mother! She could hear it all now, “Agnes, I have some bad news…your wayward daughter was seen at 2am on a Tuesday in the Stop and Shop with a bottle of Absolut in her hand.” Louise was certain Sister would word it this way to avoid any questions about her own presence in the Shop and Shop at 2am.

In a panic, Louise rushed for the door.

Never mind figuring out the meaning behind this bizarre evening or what the massive quantities of Massengill meant, just please Jesus, Mary and Joseph, don’t let Sister Meldrida remember who I am and tell on me (again).

Just as there was hope and just as she was about to make her escape unscathed, a deep male voice said, “I think you need to pay for that bottle of Absolut vodka, Louise O’Shea.”

She knew that voice. And that voice apparently knew her too.

Slowly Louise turned to face the face of the boy she had disfigured (only slightly, really, his scars had healed quite nicely and now in full adulthood they even lent him a ruggedly handsome kind of appeal)!

Who wouldda thunk it? On a mid-October, Tuesday at 2am in the Stop and Shop.

Fred Reed.

Sister Meldrida.

All that was missing to complete the evening was an appearance by her old principal and her mother.

The little bell at the top of the Stop and Shop’s door jingled as an elderly man and woman stepped somberly inside.

The sound morphed slowly into a buzzer, then blared loudly over and over.

Louise awakened to the sound of her alarm clock as an extra clean tropical breeze of a mid-July morning wafted through her window.

She lay for a moment in her bed as her dream slowly faded as most dreams do when confronted by the light of day.

She smiled lazily remembering the exquisite feeling of washing Fred’s smug face with a mixture of snow, ice and gravel after what he had said to her. Too bad she couldn’t have washed out his foul little mouth as well. She didn’t forget to also remember with some bit of pleasure the satisfying sound as he met with the Absolut that night.

After years donated and a fortune spent on therapy, Louise had finally learned to let go of her overly burdensome conscience and her compulsion to please everyone around her in some way – at least in her waking hours. She did not tell her therapist (hoping to save that time and money for a nice trip to Ireland), that the old Louise was often plagued in her dreams by all that she had shed in her waking hours.

She had come so see herself as RL Louise and Dreamtime Louise...not sure this “Two-Faces of Louise” thing she had going on was healthy but hey, that trip to Ireland held far more appeal than crying on a couch twice a week.

RL Louise was a basically happy woman, at peace with who she was and with no twangs of past guilt. So, what if she had occasionally to put up with Dreamtime Louise? Agnes, her mother, had moved to a new neighborhood and while she sometimes made a passing swipe at Louise hoping to set off some old landmine of contention, her onslaughts were becoming fewer and further between.  As for pity-party-power, if Louise should ever see Fred or his mother somewhere and if either one dared to ask, “How you doing sweetie?” Her answer would be, “Just fine. ABSOLUTELY fine!”

Louise checked the appointments on her cell phone and saw that her first customer was down for a deep facial cleaning and microdermabrasion – her specialty! It was going to be a glorious day.