Find a Critique Partner
Penny Orland
By Penny Orland
May 28, 2008, 07:13

“King of spades,” God said aloud, dealing a high card to the next in line.  The boy would grow up to be President of the United States.  He’d be well liked and make so-so policies, but lack the ability to make decisions capable only of an ace.  Chances are he’d have an obsession of some sort.

The road for these lucky ones would be well paved and often resurfaced.

A young male protégé drew a six of clubs.  Dreaming of practicing law, he’d settle to be an insurance salesman.  Later in life, he’d be elected to political office after a brief career as a wrestler.

God came to another and stood.  The faint fluttering of a card slipping from His fingertips pierced the silence.  It landed facedown in front of her.  The timid spirit stooped to retrieve her lot in life.  She hesitantly turned the card over and gazed at the lowly two of hearts.  Disappointment welled in her eyes, staining her irises the shade of a gloomy day in Seattle.  This forlorn angel would venture through life on a rockier road.

She wistfully fondled the card in her hand, tracing the red digit with her fingertips.  Tears spilled from her eyes.  Feeling His gaze upon her, she brushed her hands across her cheeks and lifted her head.

A loving stare met her dreary blue eyes.  What He didn’t give her in direction, He’d make up for in compassion and a sense of humor.  Yes, she’d endure a destiny flavored with the contrite poetry of laid-off Hallmark jingle writers, but she’d have the resolve to tackle obstacles of great bodily proportion, possibly earning multiple Gold Keys from Weight Watchers.

His countenance radiated confidence, forcing the corners of her mouth to curl upwards and spurring a flow of words to her head.  Almost like a reflex.  Or a prayer.  “I’ll be the best Two of Hearts I can be,” she vowed.

And that is how I imagined I came to be.

Chapter 1: Gimme a Two

My life was full of disasters.  “None of them earth shattering,” Mom teased with a smile so wide you’d swear she stapled the corners of her mouth to her ears.  Her close-set blue eyes twinkled.  Mom was born with two excesses — wrinkles and optimism.  The first made her loosely resemble a Sharpai, and the second checked her reality dipstick at a quart low.

What could she possibly know about my life?  Hers was different.  She’d never been jarred off the toilet by a trembler at the crack of dawn.  As if being tossed from the pot by a quake wasn’t disastrous enough, as I tumbled to the floor, a slew of cosmetics on a shelf over the toilet had splashed into the basin.

“Okay,” I’d shouted as I did each morning as reaction to my latest catastrophe, “who made this mess?”

“Not me,” chimed in four denials from under every available doorframe.

“Don’t fret,” Mom, chipper as ever, advised when I’d finally reached her over busy circuits.  “No one will notice you’re wearing watered down makeup.  People are too preoccupied with their own mishaps to worry about yours.”

“Mishap?” I cried.  “It’s not my rosy cheeks I’m worried about.  It’s the huge crack across the front of my house.  Every glass I own shattered, and…”

“See.  I told you stick with Tupperware.”

“I’d rather die,” I said defiantly, not disclosing my unbreakable go-with-any-décor white Corelle plates were still intact.  The gold border elevated the dishes a whole notch above Mom's turquoise melmac — until my upwardly mobile cousin Toni with an ‘i’ for color, had labeled the trim, “Too mustard yellow.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Mom tsk-tsked.  “You’re lucky no one was hurt.”

“You’ll never understand,” I grumbled, ignoring the obvious.  “There’s bricks in my driveway from my used-to-be chimney.”

“I didn’t know you had a chimney.”  So I exaggerated.  If I had one, it’d been rumble in my driveway.

But Mom was right.  No one noticed my near disasters.  Worse, did anyone care?  No Sir Lancelot riding bareback, golden locks flowing in the breeze, to sweep me off my feet.  Even if I’d been thinner.

On that ground-moving day, over three and a half decades and eight miles east from where I began, with two snippy teens and another two not far behind, entrenched in substandard mediocrity with two Weight Watchers Gold Keys dangling from my neck, I bet I did have it worse than anyone else.  At best if I lived long enough, continuing on the same course, I’d end up remaining in the Golden State, populating the city of Riverside.

I wanted to come to terms with my life.  Honest.  I’d searched out charm schools, self-help books, and religion.  Then waited for the magic to hit.  Who was I kidding?  I never waited patiently for anything.  More like whined and dined my way into oblivion.

Would there ever be a time when the woman in me loved neither too little nor too much?  Would I find life’s answers, say in a religion founded by a science fiction writer?  Comedian, maybe…  I’d have settled for knowing the appropriate time to wear white shoes.

But nothing lessened my Two of Hearts plight.  Not shoulders back and head erect.  Not the dog-eared stack of positive affirmations stuffed in my purse.  Not even pray to the left, pray to the right, stand up, sit down, feel the light, light, light religious pep rally enthusiasm.  Despite zealous cheering, prospects for a final judgment day based on a curve were a stretch.

Still, I wanted to believe.  Most likely goaded by the annoying la-la-land propaganda Mom churned out.  Imagine — a Two with high hopes.  A few skewed beliefs and mastery of a codependent enabling technique couldn’t stymie all that possibility to dwell on Easy Street. 

Divorced, disheveled, and granted, a tad demented.  Why not delusional?  Even my diluted makeup had a pinkish glow.

I glanced at the four happy children, neatly dressed in matching handmade clothes.  Someone else’s kids.  Not mine.  No getting around it.  I was a realist, climaxed by that revealing Sunday a week after the quake.

Spirituality never happened before noon, and rarely after dinner.  Just driving to church negated any possible hope for a divine experience.  First the knock-down-drag-out fight to see who sat in front.  Then the inspection line in the parking lot.  The seven-year-old had stood at attention.  Shirttails half in, half out.  White socks with dress shoes.  I’d noticed because one pant leg caught in a white sock.  His hair messed up in the fight for the front seat.  He’d forced a smile.  I was too exhausted to be amused.  “You look like dog poop,” I’d said, taking advantage of the teaching moment.  He began to cry and wouldn’t go inside because his eyes were red and puffy.

It was difficult for a person with a warped sense of humor to attend church regularly.  But the marquee outside had caught my eye — Compare our fear and trembling, so there I was.

That day they spewed how great my hand would be if I played my cards right.  Then something they said made me quiver.  Enough that I glanced around for a doorframe to brace myself under.  What if allowing my girls to quit taking piano lessons left me in the discard pile?  I mean, organized religion begged me to take it all so seriously.  I felt like the basics — choose right from wrong, love my neighbor, and believe in the Keeper of the Cards — had been trumped by live-and-let-live, gray areas and guilt.

Even Mrs. Sponge made me feel guilty.  She was the hundred-and-fifty-year-old chorister, perched on the pew next to the podium in a bad wig.  She nodded and affirmed every gospel tidbit from the pulpit while I slouched in back, mumbling, “I don’t understand.  Are you sure?”

“Pray always,” the man instilling fear into me said.  “But be careful what you ask for,” he added, in a lively tone that should have been prohibited.  “You might get it.”  Word for word the same advice the guy in white had offered so many years before during the marriage ceremony for me and my ex-husband.  Now when I think about it, I wonder who was that man — man of the cloth or Pillsbury bake-off finalist?

Sure enough, I recalled some pretty iffy answers…  At thirteen I sat glued to T.V.’s American Bandstand, pleading on bended knee for rhythm and a good beat.  Instead I got no rhythm and a big seat.  Later in life I’d beseeched God for a new best friend just before my mother-in-law moved within half a mile.  And every time I prayed for a break, my young son fractured his wrist — again.

But I was jealous of Mrs. Sponge.  As I hobbled humbly to Sunday School behind her airy steps, I knew her life was easier.  Maybe she came to earth as a Two and promoted to a Four, I reasoned.  With her blond wig, she couldn’t be much higher than that.

“Are there any questions regarding last week’s lesson?” asked the teacher.

True to form for me I hadn’t been there the previous week.  But he kept staring at me, so I groaned, “Yeah, why is life so hard?”

He was game, gazing around the room.  “Can you good folks help out?”

“Other people make choices that affect us,” one man answered soberly, his cup of philosophical explanations runneth over.

“We’re here to be tested,” expressed a young mother holding her sleeping newborn, bursting with unblemished hope “and if we're proven worthy, we’ll abide with Him for eternity.”

“It isn’t so bad.  I know, even with my hardships,” said an old lady one step from life’s finish line, “I’m being blessed every minute.”  I made a mental note to check last night’s TV Guide.  I’d wager Disney had aired Pollyanna again.

He tossed the question back to me, thinking I’d been inspired by the comments.  “Penny,” the instructor continued, “why do you think your trials torment you?”

“God’s practical jokes,” I spoke honestly.  “Look at these legs.”  I stood and hiked up my long skirt.  “Think any flamingos are envious of these?  And my complexion…”  I flicked my finger against my cheek.  “White, nearly transparent skin.  I’ll never convince the Beach Boys I’m California born and breed.  I once slapped Tan-In-A-Bottle goop on these ivory legs.  The stains looked like splotches of infant diarrhea.”

All the gawking watch-what-you-say eyes bulged.  The women looked like their control-top pantyhose were too tight.  A few members of the class scooted their chairs uncomfortably (away from me).  Still, a couple of brave ones tried to wipe back a grin.

“God must have a sense of humor,” I elaborated.  “I don’t get really bad stuff.  Just junk no one else wants.”

Everyone glared at me.  The smirks on the faces of the few brave souls slid off their mouths.  Then their eyes rolled back.  Who is this slightly out-of-kilter person? they must have wondered.

“I had a vision.  I got dealt a Deuce in the deck of life — the card no one would draw intentionally.”  My near perfect classmates never batted an eyelash at my disclosure.  “Come to think of it, all my near disasters begin with the letter D — divorce, depression, driving disorders, dementia…,” I rambled.  “If there was a D line on the way to earth, I stood in it.”

After an eyeful of me, they knew the D line had nothing to do with cup size.

“Think of it — fame, fortune, Fantasyland — just two lines over,” I muttered, then consciously decided to laugh.  “I didn’t get meaty sympathy-generating D’s.  With my luck, I’ll die from dry-cracked-heels.  Can’t you see it?  For years, leading to my demise, I’ll walk barefoot, snag loose flimsy items with my heels, and drag them across the room.”

One nice old lady never did catch my drift.  “Don’t worry, honey,” she leaned over and whispered.  “One day your kids will grow up, turn their lives around, and come back just like the Prodigal Son.  Then you’ll have all A’s.”

Just what I needed — Airheads.

They all knew what I was thinking.  It wasn’t easy for a Two of Hearts to hide her feelings.  The class shuddered in unison.  Then they smiled that same little condescending grin you see on the faces of people in the presence of a crazy person.  Or in-laws.

I telephoned my sister that night before dropping off to sleep.  As I recounted my D list of tribulations, Holly must have mentally pictured our family’s most visible asset.  “Where does big butt fit in?” she interrupted, then sighed.  “Oh, yeah, desk-like derriere.”

See, she understood exactly.