MRS DALLOWAY TRAVELS TO COSTCO

Hold on, she said. Lemme finish my coffee.

No longer young, she poured with trembling fingers her Folger's Instant, the same her retired mailman, oh what was his name? - oh, it would come to her.

It was a delicious day and the first World War was nearly over, thank heavens. Neither she nor her husband, Colonel Wainwright, believed in a higher power. They believed in daffodils, forsythia, jonquils and a cerulean blue sky where upon occasion a helicopter would fly above the earth.

Hitler. What a bad man. A funny little man whose voice sounded like the high notes of a piano, stopping and starting, stopping and starting.

She pulled on her striped cardigan, belted it, and went to the front garden to greet her men with various floral arrangements. As if they cared. Well, she did. Ruthie Dalloway. She had pinwheels that twirled oh-so-quickly they became a blur.

Bought last week at the Saint David's Carnival for two bits.

A loud noise zoomed overhead.

What? Can't be, she thought. (italix)

A helicopter with whirring propellers.

 

Like a drunken butterfly it tottered to the ground and right into the front yard of her victory garden. This is a vegetable garden, especially a home garden, planted to increase food production during a war.

Two officers practically fell out of the plane, ducked under the propellers, and saluted. “Mrs. Dalloway, we are sorry to bring you bad news.” They paused. “Terrible news, in fact.”

"I refuse to hear it," she said, in the same manner that Voltaire would not hear of a bad thing.

Her blonde hair streaming behind her, she ran into the house, and poured steaming black coffee into a “We Love Mother” thin-handled cup, and sat on her sofa and sobbed.

“No, no,” this can’t be happening.

Huge bumble-bees visited her garden, seemingly ignorant to wars and magnolia blossoms bursting into bloom and the Kudzua Japanese dogwood dazzling the twin houses on the street.

War! Would it ever end?

Yes! She would gather her girlfriends together. Didn’t matter if they were 70 or 80 or 90. The words, A daydream believer crowded onto her tongue. A bumble-bee buzzed its way into belief. She tied a red kerchief around her messy blonde hair.

A daydream believer, a daydream believer. The wind swept it upward into the heavens.

In a defeated voice, she called, “Ready. Ready.” Just check to make sure the burners are turned off.