"To Pass Her Time"
by Renee LaBonte-Jones

The old neighborhood was nearly unrecognizable. For that matter, so was Marjorie. She no longer appeared the gangly tomboy she had pretended to be in youth. She had blossomed into what the pokey old folks call “a real clan beauty” as though the responsibility of her entire family’s aesthetics rested with her—a charge she resented but bore silently.

Marjorie’s father was, by all accounts, New Money. His father had been a handyman. But his son made the right speculations, got the right amount of money in the right men’s hands. And now Marjorie would never have to worry about sleeping beneath a leaky roof again.

That change occurred when she was merely a scrap of six, and she could hardly have realized its impact. They moved to a lovely large house in the city, and her cares slipped from her as childhood turned to girlhood, as girlhood turned to adolescence. She had a sneaking suspicion, at seventeen years of present age, that womanhood was just around the bend for her, but she kept it at bay with rosy cheeks that could not be credited to rouge.

But now they were back in the old neighborhood, home from the city life, to prepare for Grandmother’s deathbed.

Marjorie was the sort of girl with a name that ought to be shortened and which utterly refused to do so. She was the sort to smile easily and to never mean it. She was the sort of girl who always had a cigarette and never ever smoked them. She was a girl who was bored. Frightfully bored. Unyielding bored. With life, with everything—and she would sooner burn her stockings in the street before she allowed anyone to suppose as much.

Marjorie hadn’t been in the old neighborhood in such a length of time as to give her a certain relief. No one would remember the fire which had been her soul as a child. Her soul was an electric light now—still as bright, still as effective, wholly artificial and contrived. Far more distortable. Modern, and less mysterious.

Marjorie was the sort of girl with wild eyes, as though there was an adventure in her past, something she couldn’t forget. But this was as false as anything about her. She was the sort of girl that read novels and changed the endings to suit her whims.

If possible, wholly unlikely and entirely lethargic, the old neighborhood had changed more than Marjorie had.

There were other young folk now. That was a shift in the population which happened slowly, and was noticed overnight. When Marjorie had been born in her grandmother’s house, Maple Hurst—a home so old it was built when homes were named—her grandmother’s generation had populated the town. They had ruled it, they had influenced it, and one could hardly breathe. But now, they were going the way of their precious corset. Fast music and slow regrets were taking over. The Great War was all but forgotten, if you drank enough. As Zelda would say, everyone was famous. Marjorie was famous because she decided to be—she created an aura that was irresistible. She created it in a decided fashion, she created it meticulously.

She wanted to be a Modern Woman. Capital letters and everything. Not the sort of Modern Woman who worked hard to earn every bit of money and respect and freedom that men had. That would be too exhausting. Marjorie didn’t have the constitution for it. She wanted to be the sort of Modern Woman who showed her knees, the sort of Modern Woman who kissed whomever she pleased. Because why ever not? She wanted to be the sort of Modern Woman who could cause a scandal without ever lifting a finger, madness born in her wake. The sort of Modern Woman who could never possibly be so frightfully bored.

Marjorie couldn’t remember when this frightful boredom had enveloped her life. She supposed it must have occurred around the time Papa got his money. That was the last truly interesting thing to happen, for they packed up their old house, every last bit of it, and Grandmother wept as Grandmother was apt to do, and she rode for the very first time in a motor car. She thought that day that she would always love to ride in a motor car, that she would always feel a thrill at her hair whipping about her, that her heartbeat would always keep time with the tires. But then in the city she rode in a motor car daily.

And it had lost its charm.

So now she sat, bored and beautiful and bored, a fact she could never forget. She was on her dying Grandmother’s dying porch, with a cigarette in hand and a glazed look in her eye. Her ruby red lips were curled into a smile. She had been passing the quiet minutes by supposing how different life would be if dresses grew on trees, perfectly tailored and styled and embellished. They would hang like willow branches, and different colors would bloom in different seasons. There was a book that sat opened and unread in her lap, which she noticed when her dreamy gaze was banished with a blink.

She slammed it shut and tossed it halfheartedly onto the grass beyond the railing. “I am tired of this world,” she muttered.

Tanned hands bent to pick up the scorned novel. Marjorie looked up to see the face of a man she almost recognized. Would have recognized had it been a mere boy. She tried to smile, then decided to scowl. “Can I help you?” she asked, perfectly aware that she had never helped anyone.

“Is this yours?” He held the book out toward her. She ignored it.

“You cannot barge in here, my Grandmother is dying.” Marjorie offered monotonously, “Show some compassion.”

The man laughed. She wanted to slap him. He continued to laugh. “The Old Lady’s been dying for ten years.”

“She’s really doing it this time,” Marjorie assured him. “The doctors all agree, Papa’s brought in the very best specialists.”

“And I suppose that’s why you’re at her bedside this very moment, as opposed to throwing someone’s dime novel to the universe.”

“It’s my dime novel.” This conversation wasn’t as appealing as she had given it credit for. “And the universe can have it at a discount.”

The almost stranger placed the book back on the grass and leaned against the porch railing. “So The Old Lady’s your grandma?”

Marjorie nodded.

“You grow up around here?”

“Near enough.”

“I grew up around here. The Old Lady had a granddaughter, but she was a scrappy little thing. That couldn’t have been you.”

“No.” She shook her head. “Couldn’t have. I’ve never been scrappy.”

They both nodded. They both stifled a laugh.

“Why do you call her The Old Lady?” Marjorie asked. “This neighborhood is full of old ladies.”

“She’s one of the last.”

“She’s ninety-nine years old. Papa’s hoping she’ll stay alive long enough to finish the year.”

“Who would that help?”

“Him.”

“Does she have enough gumption?”

“Ten years of dying really wears a lady down.”

“As much as ten years of living will do, that’s for sure.” The almost stranger smirked.

“Who are you?” Marjorie asked.

“Donn Charon, train dispatcher.”

“More than I asked for,” Marjorie jabbed. “Why are you here?”

“To see The Old Lady off.”

“Who is she to you?”

“The Old Lady, of course.”

“You’re circular.” Marjorie stood. She too leaned against the railing—railings are such perfectly heightened things to lean on. “Would you like to see her now?”

“Not unless you really think she’s dying.” Donn Charon frowned.

“I’m afraid so.” Marjorie attempted a frown. Almost managed one. “Papa didn’t want to leave the city at this time. That’s how I know.”

“What’s your favorite part of the city?”

“Everything,” she lied. “Yours?”

“I haven’t been.”

Marjorie wanted to laugh. “You’re the train dispatcher.”

“For this neighborhood.”

“Doesn’t the train go right through the city?” Marjorie genuinely scowled. “Isn’t that the idea of a train?”

“Why would I go to the city?”

“Why would you stay here?”

“The Old Lady ain’t dead yet.”

“And then you’ll just whisk off? On one of those trains you’re always dispatching?”

“The closest thing I have to a plan.”

“You don’t make any sense.”

“You make even less.”

She smiled. That was the idea.

“You got a motor car?” she asked him.

“Nope. Just a bicycle.” He pointed to a bike, which leaned against the tree at the end of her grandmother’s yard.

“It’ll have to do.” Marjorie stood straight. She strapped into her neglected shoes that had been tossed beneath the bench and said to the almost stranger, “One good shock should do her in. Then she finally gets to rest and everyone gets to follow their bare-boned plans.”

The almost stranger, who wasn’t a stranger any longer because he had a name, seemed to be sizing her up, this girl with wild hair but smooth shoulders. There was enough smirk to make anyone think she meant it—what she said—to cause such a sensation as to kill The Old Lady from the shock of it. A smirk appeared on his face, mirroring hers.

Marjorie opened the front door to the house, never taking her eyes off the bicycle. She skipped merrily toward it, as though she didn’t have a plan. Maybe she didn’t.

“Will you take a ride with me?” she asked. “I’m prepared to sit on the handlebars.”

“Have you sat on the handlebars of some fellow’s bike before?”

“Not once, I will probably look ridiculous.” She smiled wider.

“Why do you look so pleased with yourself?” Donn Charon folded his arms.

“Grandmother cannot abide our looking ridiculous.”

“Do you often kill grandmothers for sport?”

“You should see my trophies.”

In the end, Marjorie never got on those handlebars. She had opened the front door hoping that people would look through it and instead her mother came out to breathe air that didn’t smell like death. When she saw Marjorie near the edge of the property, she waved to her, in the motherly sort of wave that requires immediate attention. And Marjorie sighed in the way Marjorie will and was sorry her plan was over before she could formulate one. There was a brief moment where she almost wasn’t bored.

Donn Charon let out a breath Marjorie hadn’t noticed he had been holding, and she looked at him almost disappointed. He was watching the mother as though deciding a balance, but the mother seemed to stand in the middle, refusing either side of judgment.

“Alive since eighteen twenty-eight and what did she see?” the mother asked with sad wide eyes as they approached her.

“A lot of Queen Victoria.” Marjorie shrugged, leaning against the railing and clasping her mother’s hand in hers.

Where Marjorie hadn’t known the stranger until he ceased to be a stranger, the mother seemed more or less to expect him. She didn’t acknowledge him, which is how the mother behaved around those she more or less expects. This made Marjorie feel stupid, which isn’t quite the same as feeling bored, so she allowed it.

“I don’t think I could bear to see the world change as she had.” The mother attempted to cry.

“You’ll see more than her, Mother dear, and you won’t realize that it happened until it happens.”

The mother nodded, she wept some more with dry eyes, then bravely returned to the deathbed. Emotions ran quickly with her.

Marjorie turned back to the former stranger and noticed all the mischief gone from his eye. She hadn’t noticed it leaving, only that it had left.

“I thought today would build up to more than this,” Marjorie said, walking back to the porch and sitting on the little bench where first we found her, the idea of the Grandmother-killing-bicycle scandal far from her mind.

“What will your family do after this?” Donn Charon asked, back in his original position by the railing.

“Continue.” Marjorie shrugged. “That is all we do.”

“I’ll have to come for The Old Lady some other time, I think,” he said, his gaze falling back on the long-neglected dime novel.

“There is no other time, she’s dying.”

“That’s what I hear.” He nodded, suddenly unconvinced. “This world is circular and repetitive—”

“—and boring—”

“—and I must go the way I came.”

Marjorie shrugged because it was nothing to her. The stranger, who it seemed was a stranger again, rode past on the bike of abandoned schemes. He bid farewell to Marjorie with a jolly wave and a smile that was inappropriate to smile at a girl who was waiting outside a deathbed.

She sat with her ankles crossed and her shoulders hunched and her lips pouting. There was a scream that was building up in her chest that she would never ever release. She smiled just as inappropriately as she saw the stranger’s bike disappearing beyond the trees on other yards down the lane. Soon she couldn’t even hear his bell ringing. All she heard was the ringing of her ears. So she whistled to banish it.