The stack of last year’s greeting cards shifted under the clutter of sales receipts and bank statements and slid toward the edge of Jane’s desk. Reflexively her right arm swept forward to catch the pile of papers as it had done years ago to prevent whichever child was riding shotgun from going through the windshield when Jane would slam on the brakes as she hurtled mindlessly through the morning rush to drop the kids at school on her way to work. Now, the automatic action proved worse than futile. Lunging, she knocked over her coffee cup. The last of her latte splashed over her keyboard and her tax forms fluttered to the floor along with all those damned cards.
Jane took the Lord’s name in vain. “Jesus!” she swore, adding insult to injury, for good measure. “Jesus, ON TOAST.” Tears prickled hot behind the lids of her watery blue eyes. She felt her face redden in shame and exasperation. In Jane’s world death and taxes were definitely a thing, but greeting cards—Christmas, get well, thank-you, birthday—came in a close third. They had to be dealt with.
Swiveling in her desk chair, Jane puffed a little with the effort of bending over to gather the cards into a pile. They reminded her of the senders, all the people who loved her. The most recent Mother’s Day card from her daughter stuck sideways out of the heap. Feeling a little light-headed Jane laughed as she read the caption, “We’ve had quite a few adventures…and most of them were your fault.” Well, they had survived, hadn’t they? All those years of single parenting, moving from job to job, apartment to apartment. Jane had always made new friends, took new lovers, got her kids through school and into adulthood. She knew how lucky she was, that God was good, and that friends and family were a gift. But in this particular moment, she resented every one of them, including the kids, for burdening her with physical proof of their affection. Behind each card was a life that had entangled itself with her life.
Jane wasn’t sure how much longer she could contend with the burden of relationships, the distractions and detritus of human interactions. It was bad enough that she had to deal with 1040s, 1099s, and Schedule Cs. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, Jane rummaged through her desk drawer for a rubber band to bundle the cards securely. Her arthritic fingers fumbled to stretch the elastic around the mementos.
“Sorry, Lord,” she said to Jesus. “You know I can’t throw them away. I tried. You can only do so many decoupage jewelry boxes. And how many collages can you fit into a studio apartment?” The three dozen cards she used on those projects barely put a dent in the stash that had accumulated over the two decades since her retirement. Jesus didn’t say anything. Jane sat looking at her desk in all its coffee-splattered disarray. “What can I say,” she said dejectedly. “It’s just so hard.”
“What’s so hard, Jane?” Jesus asked, focusing that beam of light from his third eye directly at her heart.
“Trying to sort things out,” Jane said anxiously, “To make sense of it all.” A rising panic tightened her throat.
Jesus raised an eyebrow. “You think there’s going to be a test?” he asked.
“You mean there isn’t?” Jane blurted as a blinding realization hit her between the eyes. She had, in fact, not only been expecting a test, but expected to fail. Pinwheels spun and tiny tinkling bells cascaded dizzily in her brain. Jane saw how she had been expecting Death to be difficult, to be called to account, itemized receipts required. All the obligations of love and loss and living to be sorted and filed by the deadline. Then, and only then, would she be allowed to rest.
Jane didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She laid her head down on her desk, as Jesus received her into his merciful arms.
Cynthia has been writing for decades, most recently as a way to take creative action in the accelerated destabilization around the world. Having previously been published under Nonfiction in The Raven’s Perch, she has turned to fiction to confront Death and Taxes.
