Betty Rides Again
Creative Writing - Prose - Never Say Never
by Anne R. Allen
On the Monday morning after her silver wedding anniversary, Betty Jo Stevenson found a lump in her breast. She was taking her morning shower when she felt it--just a little thin--like a nasty pebble, stuck beneath the spongy layer of flesh in the underside of her left breast. Why hadn't she noticed it before?
Fighting for breath, she turned off the water and felt for it again. There it was: a real lump. How long had it been there? She probably didn't self-examine as often as she should. She always felt that touching herself was a little naughty, and besides, she didn't like to be reminded of the toll that fifty-two years of gravity had taken on her figure.
She stepped out of the tub still sudsy, cradling the heavy sack of her breast in her hand, keeping a finger on the lump. She needed to tell Bob, who was standing right there in his white jockey shorts, shaving, but she couldn't think of the words.
Had the light over the sink always been that bright? She had to squint to look at him.
Her mind filled with a ridiculous memory--that time in high school when the girls told her that bad-boy biker Frankie Russo had a picture of her in her cheerleading sweater taped inside his locker. Right next to the one of Raquel Welch in her cavegirl bikini.
"Betty Boobs, he calls you," somebody said. Probably Lucinda. She knew everything, even then. "You should do something. Don't let him think you're some biker slut."
But Betty Jo kind of liked knowing that Frankie Russo thought she was some biker slut. Walking by his locker, she'd always felt tingly all over, and a little proud--the opposite of how she felt now, standing in the middle of the bathroom floor, dripping herbal-scented body wash from her lumpy breast, watching her husband of twenty-five years shave the grizzled stubble from his chin.
Now she'd never feel that tingly feeling again.
Bob seemed to be talking to the mirror. "...my blue sport coat? It's disappeared. I like to wear it with my Rotary tie. You know I have a Rotary breakfast this morning."
"Lump," she said.
"...why do things keep disappearing? Just when you get used to something, somebody decides it's too old and gets rid of it." Bob rinsed his face and dried it with one of the new silver-trimmed towels his sister Audrey sent for their anniversary. White, with sparkly Lurex trim. Betty Jo thought they were a little tacky.
"I didn't want to buy you real silver," Audrey wrote. "You'd just spend the rest of your life polishing it." The rest of her life. Betty Jo shivered. How long would that be?
"See?" She held out her pale breast to her husband, as if she could show him the dark horror growing inside.
"...like old Ernie Moriarty, the night security guy at my building." Bob splashed on his Old Spice. "Nice guy. He'd been around so long he was like part of the furniture. But he's not there any more. If he retired, I never heard about it. It's like he just faded away."
"See?" she whispered again.
But Bob didn't see her at all. Or hear. As if she'd faded away, too.
She got back in the shower, rinsed off the body wash and soaped up again, with the boys' Lava this time, as if somehow she could scrub away the cancer. Cancer. No. She didn't want her mind to go there. Maybe it was one of those benign lumps. Cancer would be so unfair. She'd always done everything right--exercising three days a week, eating oatmeal and lots of fruits and vegetables. She'd never smoked or dyed her hair. Well, OK--she'd smoked for a few months, back in high school. When she was trying to impress Frankie Russo.
Frankie. She wondered what had become of him, with his tangle of dark curls and his big black motorcycle--and that smirk that said, "You can't fool me, Betty Jo. You've got your wild side." She'd heard a rumor that Frankie ended up in prison. Or moved to California. Something like that. Lucinda would know. She'd have to stop by Lucinda's store one of these days and find out.
Her wild side. If she'd ever had one, it had faded long ago, like the rest of her. Like Ernie Moriarty. Like the old blue towels she'd replaced with Audrey's sparkly ones.
The blue towels. She had to remember to take them to the Goodwill bin at the Stop and Shop parking lot this morning on the way to the bank.
By the time she got downstairs, Bob had gone to his breakfast meeting and the boys were in the kitchen, toasting pop-tarts. Mike stood at the refrigerator with the door open, drinking orange juice from the carton.
"You're not supposed to do that," said Brandon, in his baby-brother whine. "Dad will kill you if he sees you doing that." He grabbed the pop-tarts from the toaster and put them on a plate. "What if you had cancer or AIDS or something? You'd give us your germs and we'd all die."
"I'm not talking to you, Brando," said Mike. "You stole my lucky hat."
"Use a glass, Mike," Betty Jo said. "Not because you can catch cancer..." She choked on the word and couldn't go on.
Mike took a last slurp of juice, leaned over the table, grabbed a pop-tart, and took off out the back door.
"Hey, those are my pop-tarts!" said Brandon. "And I don't have your stupid baseball cap!"
"I'll toast you another one, baby..." Betty Jo said. But Brandon picked up his backpack and ran right past her as if she didn't exist.
She stopped by Dr. Foster's office on her way to do her errands. She wanted to book an appointment right away to get the lump looked at.
At first she thought she had the wrong office. The whole place had been remodeled to make more office and less waiting room. What was left of the waiting area was crowded with young, pregnant women and crying babies.
Strangest of all, Sally Winfield was gone. Plump, always-smiling Sally, who had been Dr. Foster's receptionist since the day she graduated from high school--a year ahead of Betty Jo--wasn't there. Instead, five young women sat behind the new counter, staring at computer screens.
"Hello. Excuse me?" Betty Jo said several times. "I'd like to make an appointment?"
A dark young woman pointed at a clipboard on the counter. "Everyone must please to sign in. Name. Time of appointment. Insurance."
"I don't have an appointment. I want to make one. I've found a lump..."
But the young woman was gone. Behind the desk, a girl with a purple spider tattooed on her forearm took a sip from a Starbucks cup and said, "I swear they put full-fat milk in my latte. I ordered non-fat, but this has like, an oil slick on it. I'll probably have a heart attack and croak like old Miss Winfield."
"Sally Winfield? Is she dead?"
Nobody answered.
The Goodwill bin was full, so Betty Jo had to leave her box of discards beside it. Even the Goodwill didn't seem to want her.
She was wondering if anything else could go wrong when a creep in an SUV zoomed into the only space in front of the bank just as she'd pulled forward to back in. She had to drive around the block again, feeling more and more invisible, like some non-existent Jimmy Stewart in an alternate-universe Bedford Falls.
She finally found a space in front of Lucinda's Hallmark and Gifts. Maybe one of Lucinda's gossip-fests would set her world right again. At least she could find out about Sally Winfield.
The store looked reassuringly familiar. Lucinda's hair behind her computer monitor was the same fierce Clairol-gold helmet it had been for decades. And she still kept the tempting red satin-lined display case just to the right of the door.
Today the satin case displayed figurines of cartoon characters. Not toys: expensive porcelain Bugs Bunnys and Little Lulus, artfully displayed among Daffy Duck silk ties and Elmer Fudd silver tie clasps. Betty Jo stopped a moment as a Betty Boop key chain caught her eye--Betty wearing a jaunty cap, riding a motorcycle like the one Frankie Russo used to ride.
She opened the case and picked it up. "Sterling silver, limited edition, licensed only through Warner Brothers and the Harley Davidson Company. $99.99" said the tag. One hundred dollars. For a cartoon character key chain. But the little figure had a nice weight in her hand--not too heavy for a pocket, but easy to find in a purse.
In a crazy moment, she decided to buy it. Betty Boobs. A secret memory of what might have been. Why not? Life was short. Terrifyingly short.
Betty Jo strode toward the cash register, Betty Boop in hand. "I know I'm being silly, but..." She smiled sadly in Lucinda's direction. "I just heard about poor Sally Winfield. Did you hear she died? Only a year older than us..."
Lucinda's phone rang. She picked it up without giving Betty a glance.
"This made me think of Frankie Russo," Betty said. "Remember him, with that big old Harley? Do you know what ever happened to him? Did he move to California?"
With the phone cradled on her shoulder, Lucinda focused on her computer screen, clicking at the keyboard with red-lacquered nails.
"I really have to get to the bank," she said as Lucinda clicked away.
She tried not to be angry, but here she was trying to buy a hundred-dollar item, and even Lucinda treated her as if she were invisible. Fine. Let her lose the sale. Betty Jo walked back toward the display case. She glanced over her shoulder at Lucinda, who still didn't seem to see her.
Silver Betty Boop clutched in her hand, Betty Jo walked out into the sunshine.
A thrill rushed through her. Maybe she actually was invisible. She could take whatever she wanted. Go wherever she wanted. Live a little. Before she died of this terrible thing in her breast. Would Bob and the kids even miss her? Could you miss what you couldn't see or hear? She could do anything--start robbing banks if she wanted.
The bank. She had to deposit Bob's paycheck and get the week's grocery money.
A big, tattooed man stood ahead of her in the bank line. He rocked from one foot to the other, snorting with impatience as somebody at the counter took forever with the teller. Out of habit, Betty gave him an "ain't it awful" smile, but of course he didn't respond. She was almost getting used to this invisibility thing.
The line moved as the slow customer finally finished with the teller. A small gray man.
An alarm rang.
"Stop him! Stop!" shouted the teller.
The tattooed man shouted and ran after a dreadlocked teenager heading out the door. He didn't seem to see the gray man at all. Nobody did. The orderly lines turned into a milling crowd. Somebody fell against Betty Jo. The gray man. He looked at her with terror in his eyes--and for a moment, really seemed to see her. She'd thought she'd seen those eyes before. Ernie Moriarty's eyes.
As he regained his balance, something slipped to the floor--a blue envelope-shaped bank bag.
"Your bag," Betty said, stooping to pick it up. She wanted to help him. He seemed like a kindred spirit--a fellow invisible person.
But the man was gone. She unzipped the bag he'd dropped. It was stuffed with cash.
A crowd had gathered at the bank entrance, watching the tattooed man chase the teenager. "Get him. Get that punk!" somebody shouted.
Walking by them all with calm determination, Betty strode outside, clutching the bank bag. Nobody noticed her.
She sat in her car unmoving, staring at the window of Lucinda's store. She could feel the weight of the fat bank bag on her thighs. She was a bank robber: Mrs. Betty Jo Stevenson, outlaw. She ran her fingers through her short, graying hair. Maybe she'd let it grow--dye it red. Or jet-black. Who cared if dye caused cancer? If she already had it, there was nothing left to fear. Maybe she'd use the money to buy a motorcycle and ride to California and find Frankie Russo.
The sound of someone running by the car gave her a start.
It was the gray man, running down the street. Only he wasn't gray any more. He was wearing a blue sport coat and a baseball cap. The gold and blue cap of the South Woolsey Wolverines. This one had the W sewn on upside down, so it looked like an M. M for Mike. It was Mike's cap, the one he thought Brandon had taken. She recognized the sport coat, too: Bob's threadbare old thing she'd put in the Goodwill box.
The Goodwill box. The gray man must have ransacked the box she left in the Stop and Shop parking lot. If anybody had seen him rob the bank, they wouldn't recognize him in the new clothes. He knew he was invisible--that all anybody could see of him was his clothes.
She couldn't have said what made her do it, but she got out of her car and called out. "Stop!" She ran after him. "Stop! That's my son's baseball cap!"
The man stood statue-still, like a child playing freeze-tag.
"You took those from the Goodwill drop-off, didn't you?" She strode up to him. "The bin was full, but that didn't mean you could take what was in that box."
The gray man stood silent.
"You can see me, can't you? You can hear me. I'm not invisible to you, am I?"
The man didn't move.
"I want the cap back. I didn't mean to take it to the Goodwill."
The man gave her the baseball cap with a trembling hand.
The man's lip quivered as if he might cry. She felt the urge to throw her arms around him and let him know she understood how it felt. That she knew why an invisible, faded-away person might want to rob a bank--do one exciting thing before he died.
"It's OK, Ernie," she said. "Aren't you Ernie Moriarty, from the Medical Plaza?" She thrust the bank bag at him. "Here," she said, her body flooding with relief as she rid herself of it. "This is yours. You dropped it at the bank."
The man made a noise like air escaping from a balloon.
"I need the jacket too. My husband likes to wear it with his Rotary tie."
But the man was already running toward Elm Street.
"I need that jacket!" she called out as she ran after him.
She rounded the corner of Elm just in time to see two policemen catch him. He probably wasn't Ernie, she realized now. Ernie would be too old to run like that by now. The policemen pushed him against the side of the building and patted him down the way they do on TV, pulling the bank bag from the waistband of his pants. Then they took a gun from his pocket.
A gun. Why hadn't she realized he might have a gun? Why hadn't he shot her? Had he been too afraid? Afraid. Of her.
As she stood panting for breath, leaning on a police car, she turned and saw people gathering around. Somebody called her name. Lucinda.
"What's wrong, ladies?" said a policeman, pushing through the crowd. "Did this man rob you?"
"I think he stole my Betty Boop," said Lucinda. "I didn't notice it was missing until just now, but Betty Jo must have seen him take it." She squeezed Betty Jo's arm. "She's so brave. I was standing by my display case and when I looked up, there was Betty Jo, off and running like she was Wonder Woman or something."
More policemen arrived and handcuffed the gray man. Other cars arrived, too. One from the Tribune and another from Channel Eight News.
"You witnessed this man robbing the Hallmark store, ma'am?" said the officer.
"Not exactly..." Betty Jo had no idea what to say. People aimed cameras at her. Lights flashed. She tried to explain. "He was wearing my son's baseball cap. He must have stolen it from my Goodwill box. I knew he was probably the bank robber, because I saw him running from the counter right after the alarm went off..."
"You were in Homestead Savings at the time of the robbery?" said another officer.
"Yes," said Betty Jo.
"And you saw this man take the money?"
"I saw him walk away from the teller holding a bank bag," said Betty Jo. "I thought I was the only one who saw him. I thought..." She almost said, "we were both invisible," but stopped herself.
"Do you have a weapon, ma'am?"
"Oh, no..." Betty watched Lucinda step in front of the cameras, patting her gold hairdo.
"Betty's quiet, but she's tough," said Lucinda, with a lipsticky smile. "I've known her my whole life. She's always been a survivor."
On her way home, after she'd given statements to the police and reporters and posed for a lot of pictures with Lucinda, Betty Jo stopped by the Goodwill bin. She found her box nearby, tossed into a hedge. The towels were still in the bottom, neatly folded. The old faded blue towels. She picked them up--so soft, smelling of Bob's Old Spice.
The thought of him made her go tingly all over.
The Author
Anne R. Allen writes the "IN Her Own Write" column for Inkwell Newswatch (IN), the Toronto-based e-zine rated #1 source for writers on the web by the Writer magazine. She's also the author of three novels, two still in print (in the UK), The Best Revenge and Food of Love (available from amazon.co.uk). Her most recent fiction appears online at Dispatch and Chick Flicks. She's been living in England for most of the last three years, but she's now back in California. She misses the beer but not the rain.