Place this with last week's entry and call it Chapter 2.  As usual, this is part of Soap Opera Sunday hosted by Brillig and Kate.   I think the directions mention that this must be posted by end of Sunday which is CLOSE approaching in my timezone.  Happy reading!

 

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Marvin firmly guides his virtually comatose wife, Judy Louise, out of their brick ranch-style house in Georgia. Judy Louise has not bathed in many days and the area between her huge stomach rolls of fat is crusted with gook that will eventually turn into infection.  Her hair, weekly fixed at Upper-Cuts Salon by Marcella, is a teased and knotty mess and is leaning heavily toward the right from the countless hours she had spent in the last couple of weeks lying in bed on her left side. These many weeks, days and hours that Judy Louise lay in the bed were essentially unproductive -- she didn't watch television, read, think, write, talk -- she just lay still staring at the paneling on the wall and merging her body oils with the earth-tone striped Percale sheets.

Marvin tried to feed Judy Louise and keep her alive, but each meal started out with potential and ended in Judalou crying hysterically and drinking a bottle of any type of alcohol that she could find. The drama at the little house in the woods was too much for Marvin, although he could not leave.  What would the world think if Marvin left and Judy Louise died? He had to do something, which is why on a windy day in the early spring of 1967 Marvin herded his wife into the Lincoln Continental and was thankful for just a moment that Judy Louise had bought the expensive car, as the suicide doors made it easier for Marvin to drag and push Judy Louise's heavy and limp body into the car.

The big car motored down the country road and Marvin's thoughts wandered to the fantasy of stopping alongside the road and dumping the heavy burden of Judy Louise into the woods and driving away into the bright and happy sun and living the life he planned.  There was no rhyme or reason as to why Judy Louise went crazy. When Marvin met Judy Louise in Aiken, South Carolina in college she was the life of the party and a vibrant force that livened any gathering. Judy Louise's throng of friends affectionately named her Judalou and awaited her social instructions like minions, and the minions were rarely disappointed.  Judalou always orchestrated some type of hijinks.

In fact, the Sunday morning that Marvin Lynch met Judalou, she was fresh off one of her more famous and cruel escapades.  The previous Saturday night found Judalou and her friends drinking gin-rickie's on the boat dock at her small college, and while the friends were completely content talking and laughing, the scene was not enough for Judalou. She needed more mayhem to meet her excessively high thresh-hold of entertainment, and so Judalou decided to telephone the school's cafeteria workers at 2:00 a.m. and tell them that President Eisenhower was making a surprise visit to the school the following morning and all workers were needed to report to work immediately to begin preparations for an elaborate brunch.

The girls piled into Judalou's white Plymouth with the tall fins on the back and careened the streets in the poor neighborhood where most of the cafeteria workers lived. Each time a light came on in a house or a human figure was seen dressing, the girls howled with laughter, and Judalou was especially high, not just from the gin-rickies, but mostly from the thrill of manipulating so many people. The cruelty of dragging old, poor, hard-working people out of bed never crossed Judalou's mind. In fact, she didn't even recognize these people as people. To register in Judalou's world, a person must surf the emotional extreme and be prepared to repeatedly exhibit stunts from life on the edge -- dishing mashed potatoes did not rate.

Marvin's job in Judalou's life was that of enabler and servant.  The Sunday morning around 4:00 a.m. when Judalou's prank was in full reveal, Marvin and his boys met-up with Judalou and her friends at "The Pits", the gravel dugouts that were filled with water and served as the party plaza for area youths. Marvin was not in college, but attended a boarding school in the same town as Judalou's school.  Naturally, the boys were in awe of the college girls and the sight of Judalou jumping off the pit cliff into the dark water was more than Marvin could stand. He loved the reckless, fearless idea of Judalou.

After eight years of marriage, Judalou's emotional highs had turned to emotional lows and Marvin's admiration had turned to ambivalence. The Lincoln Continental pulled into the Heights of the Hills mental institution and the iconic men in white jackets carried Judalou to her room on a stretcher. Ten short days later, Marvin drove up the same gravel driveway to retrieve his newly fixed wife, and just as Marvin hoped, Judalou was healed, or so he thought.

A little electric shock therapy had done the trick, and Judalou showed hints of her old self. With styled hair and a clean dress, Judalou sat in a white rocking chair on the big front porch of Heights of the Hills and her tidy, modern look could have fooled most people into believing that the devil had been zapped out of Judalou, and she was now sane. However, the glassy look of her eyes, signaled to Marvin that the craziness was still there, but he didn't care because a clean, presentable wife who could sit in a chair was more than he had ten days ago, and his expectations were not much higher.

"Marvin, my baby, come get yo' momma and take her home!" bellowed Judalou from the porch, and skinny Marvin bounded up the stairs to give his big fat wife a hug.  On the way home Judalou ate the entire box of chocolates Marvin had waiting for her in the car.  Loud and chatty, Judalou was the same woman as she had been in college, but dull, vacuous statements were a new part of her personality.  For instance, with great emphasis and fiery emotional impact, Judalou boldly announces in the same tone that one would use to tell someone their arm had been shot off, "Marvin! This car is driving!"

At home, Marvin stokes the coals on the grill while Judalou chops the Iceberg lettuce and drowns it in Thousand Island dressing.  Using the big white platters Judalou thinks so impressive and saves for special “Steak Night”, the happy couple loads their platters with thick, greasy t-bone steaks, baked potatoes swimming in butter, sour cream and Baco bacon bits.  Judalou grabs the fake wood salad bowl and their promising life resumes to the sound of Sunday night football in the background.

Comments

[Brillig]

Oh, this is fantastic. And creepy. And a bit freaky. In fact, I'm gonna go check my fat rolls for crusted-gook...

[polly]

There's a very Flannery O'Connor feel to this, which means it makes me uncomfortable but it's well written.

[Diosa]

Great piece. Very unsettling.