EVERY SINGLE THING
This short story was written in 1987 by David Lefkowitz.
November is a lousy month. The trees are bare, the streets are grey, and every face you see looks like a corpse. Darkness comes at three in the afternoon, bringing with it a sudden and vicious drop in temperature. I hate the wind and I hate the rain and I hate this miserable city. I live in New York.
Last Tuesday I turned thirty, a milestone which I celebrated by paying my annual visit to Dr. Molina. She’s a jovial woman with a kind face and the coldest fingers this side of the Equator.
“Everything seems to be in working order.”
“Peachy,” said I, hurriedly throwing my gown over my knees. I felt like a raw tuna on the slab at fisherman’s market.
“Of course, we won’t know everything until the x-rays come back,” Molina smiled (doctors love to keep you in suspense). “Still smoking a pack a day?”
I was waiting for that. My “yes” was bold, defiant.
Molina leaned back on her backless stool. “And then you’re going to come here on your fiftieth birthday, riddled with heart disease and cancer, and you’ll say, `But doctor! What did I ever do to deserve this?’”
“What makes you think it’s the cigarettes?” I pointed to the x-ray machine. “Maybe it’s the hundred zillion gamma rays you keep zapping me with.”
Molina ignored me—a tactic she usually employed when confronted by logic. “You’re still young, and you have ample time to undo the damage to your lungs.”
“True,” I replied. “I could also walk out this door and get hit by a bus.”
I almost did, in fact. I was halfway across the street when a city bus driver making a left turn decided he’d rather go through me than around me. I froze—a tactic I involuntarily employ when confronted by danger—and the bus swung wide, missing my by inches and leaving behind a cloud of noxious filth.
Not wishing to straight home after such a perilous episode, I scooted into a nearby cafe to drown my sorrows in a cup of hot coffee and a danish. Neurotically concerned about my weight like any other normal adult woman, I bypassed the sugar bowl and requested several packets of my favorite artificial sweetener.
WARNING: THIS PRODUCT HAS BEEN TESTED AND PROVEN TO CAUSE CANCER IN LABORATORY ANIMALS.
Well, I thought, if you inject a mouse with a gallon of anything, his cheese-eating days are over.
I sipped my coffee slowly, taking in the sight and sound of my wretched fellow diners bracing for the chill outside. One conversation asserted itself over the din. Two men in business suits sat at a nearby table and discussed work.
“Are you back in your office?” one asked.
“Not yet.”
“Still renovating?”
“They’ve gotta take out the whole ceiling. It’s all asbestos tile from the 1950s.”
“The company finally woke up and realized it was a health hazard? What if this was too little, too late?”
“Oh, we’re all doomed, there’s no question about that.” The businessman smiled sarcastically and speared a burnt french fry that crumbled underneath his fork.
Coming home that evening, I felt I had two options. Either I could seal all the windows and turn on the gas, or do something constructive. Since my stove is electric, the first choice was instantly discarded, and I racked my brain for a positive counterattack against the death sentences that seemed to lurk in every food, textile, and crevice.
It was then that my best friend called to wish me a happy birthday. “And how have you been celebrating such a momentous occasion?” she asked expectantly. I told her.
“What?” my friend gasped. “You’re not even having a party?”
I was about to make a devastatingly cynical reply when an idea hit me with the force of an atomic blast. I spoke quickly into the phone, “Could you round up half a dozen jars of instant coffee, six cases of soda—the real stuff, not ginger ale or the stuff you can see through—uh, fifteen TV dinners, fifteen thick steaks, a double rack of pork ribs, potato chips—“
“What are you—?”
“It’s a surprise party.”
“But how can it be a surprise if you know about it?”
“Just do it,” I ordered.
I spent the next hour on the phone calling everyone I knew. Each was instructed to bring a food or beverage that was generally considered detrimental to a person’s health. My next-door neighbor promised to whip up a batch of heavy cream. My ex-husband said he’d bring three cartons of unfiltered cigarettes.
After some last-minute shopping, I arrived home to find my best friend already waiting in the hallway. We helped each other in with our packages and set to readying the apartment for a party.
Two friends from work showed up a little after seven carrying a bucket of fried onion rings and some far-from-all-beef frankfurters. Other friends soon arrived, most of them bearing alcoholic beverages. My sister and brother-in-law came by with a large shopping bag only to produce—to my horror—fresh milk, eggs, and butter. “How could you?” I screamed. “You were supposed to bring bad food.”
“These are bad,” my brother-in-law maintained. There’s enough dairy fat and cholesterol here to choke a rabbit.”
I relented and complimented my brother-in-law on his inventive choice and colorful description.
By 8:30, the party was in full swing with people chomping steaks, sharing frozen entrees, and quaffing liberal amounts of rancid domestic beer. A minor note of panic set in when we prematurely ran out of napkins. Apparently my best friend hadn’t taken
into consideration the sheer greasiness of the food being consumed. My sister ran and got some bath towels, and the orgy continued.
A little while later, I walked to the front of the living room and signaled for everyone to quiet down, “My friends,” I began. “I’d like to thank you for sharing my birthday surprise with me.”
“What’s the surprise?” piped up a friend’s inebriated date.
Another guest volunteered, “We’re all gonna wake up dead in the morning!”
“At one point or another,” I continued, “every single thing in this room has been proven hazardous to our health.” I moved dramatically along the buffet-style table. “Look at these spare ribs. Pure fat. Trichinosis if you cook `em wrong.” I marched on. “Deep dish frozen pizza—yum! Artificial flavor, artificial color, artificial preservatives. Cheese is the fourth ingredient!” I pressed forward, fired with moral outrage. “And to wash it all down, a strong cup of caffeine and a cancer stick.”
I lit a ciegarette and observed my audience whose mood was decidedly less boisterous than before. Someone coughed. I apologized for ilghting up, doused the cigarette in a glass of gin, and sprayed the air with a pungent aerosol deodorant. “So long, ozone layer,” I chirped.
This released a floodgate of nihilistic suggestions. One guest proposed that we all sit very close to the color television set and let the rays hit us. Another recommended that we all go to a mediocre seafood restaurant and order tainted clams. My favorite idea, though, came from my best friend who said, “Hey everybody! When the clock strikes twelve, let’s all take birth control pills and wait for the hair to grow on our backs.”
My ex-husband slid by me and put his hands on my shoulders. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I laughed, surprised by his concern—a trait I had not detected during our four years of marriage.
“Are you depressed about something?” my ex persisted.
“She’s depressed because everything we do is fatal!” My sister jumped to my defense: “The whole world is one big carcinogen; we’re all gonna die.”
My brother-in-law nodded. “After twenty years of using a product, they tell us to stop using it because it’ll kill us. Nobody knows what to believe.”
“Which is why,” I said, “starting tomorrow, I turn over a whole new leaf. I’m giving all this up for one year. My doctor says I should stop smoking—I’ll stop smoking. Scientists say I should avoid red meat—fine, it’s chicken and veal city. Health experts tell me to eat only natural foods—no problem. I’ll exercise every day. Anything so I don’t have to listen to a million people tell me how I’m digging myself an early grave. For one year, I’m going to be good. Anybody like to join me in my little experiment?”
The silence was deafening. “Don’t you think you’re being a bit hasty?” squeaked a friend from the office.
“You don’t know my sister,” said my sister.
My brother-in-law scooped up a handful of salted popcorn, then opened his hand and let the kernels gently fall back into the bowl. “I’ve eaten fried foods, red meats, candy bars, and colas for 36 years,” he began, “and I don’t intend to stop now, no matter how many rats and monkeys keel over to prove me wrong.”
“Coward!” I yelled merrily.
My best friend scratched her head. “If you’re giving all this stuff up, what are you going to eat?”
“There’s lots of things. Fruits, vegetables—“
“But they’re covered with pesticides and chemicals,” my brother-in-law observed. “You might as well eat bug spray.”
“So I’ll grow my own!”
“In this soil?” he countered. “Half of New York is built on swamps and toxic dumps.”
“I can eat fish. Very healthy.”
“Unless they’re full of mercury and pollution.”
I felt myself weakening and sipped some water for strength. My ex-husband snatched the glass out of my hand. “Unpurified tap water? You won’t last a day drinking that sludge.”
Proudly, I raised my head. “I know what you’re tying to do,” I said sympathetically, “but I’ve made my mind up. I’m going to get healthy if it kills me.”
My determination garnered some mild applause, but the party never got back up to speed. The last guest left at about two A.M., and I started cleaning up. Soon, three bulging trashbags lay near the kitchen sink, each filled with coffee grounds, empty boxes, crumbs, and bones.
I sat down at the kitchen table and made a shopping list. It was the same as my usual list, minus all the things I enjoyed. I braced myself for a year of goat cheese, sunflower seeds, and bee pollen.
All through college, I’d been known as a daretaker, jumping into challenges at the slightest provocation. But this didn’t seem like some silly dare. Success could turn me into a kind of bionic health goddess, and failure would only put me back where I started.
I opened the window and looked out upon a dying city. Taking a deep breath, I felt somehow superior, as if I were keeping a magical secret all to myself. That night I went to bed with a sense of inner strength and hope that I hadn’t felt in years.
I drove to work the next day. The air was damp but not unbearably cold—or maybe I just felt too good to notice. I turned the radio on, only to hear some inane Top 10 tune about young love. I didn’t feel that good, so I hurriedly spun the tuning dial and came to the round-the-clock, all-news station.
“…The body was found in the back seat of an abandoned car on 135th Street. There are no suspects…” I chuckled—always something going on in New York. “…Turning to national news, Congress is expected to approve a bill giving the go-ahead to the construction of ten Stabilizer defense missiles at a cost of over fifty billion dollars per missile. Vermont Senator John McCormick had this to say about the bill…”
The Senator then rambled on about how the missiles were a shocking waste of taxpayers’ money, howe we need to build bridges instead of barriers, and how the United States and Soviet Union can already blow each other to pieces in less than five minutes.
I turned off the radio and drove to the same coffee shop I’d visited the day before. I bought a cup of black coffee and a greasy donut, filled with ersatz chocolate and covered with processed sugar.
A fellow diner pointed to my breakfast and gently cautioned, “Watch out. That stuff’ll kill you.”
“Maybe.” I smiled and dunked the donut in the coffee. “Then again, maybe not.”
******
NOTES & BACKSTORY:
I’ve written very few short stories over the years, and on the basis of this example from 1987, the world isn’t exactly missing much. A couple of lines still give me a smile, though the overuse of adjectives and the unconvincing party scene wouldn’t exactly make this prime New Yorker fodder. I remember writing this while I was working at Playboy magazine (go ahead, make your jokes) and showing it to a young woman working there, hoping to impress her. Her reply was that she could tell instantly that a woman didn’t write this and that I knew very little about women’s behavior and p.o.v. A date was not forthcoming.
The Collected Writings of... David Lefkowitz 