The Theft

a disenchanted step mother brightens up her day

"Well honey, have a good day at work", Lara said as her husband, Roger, hoisted himself out of the car.  His briefcase knocked her violin to the floor as he lifted it.  Leaning down he delivered his final morning commentary. "Don't forget that John Dowell is coming over to dinner tonight. It's very important to me.  He likes chicken.  And don't buy the chicken at Greenmart.  Their chickens always come out  so dry and tasteless.  Try to cook something nice this time.  Oh and... what's going on with your car?  It smells like a French w***e house".

"Sorry...," Lara murmured as she restarted the engine.  Enough criticism for one morning.  She hoped he wouldn't be too critical of her in front of his boss, Mr.  Dowell.  It didn't bother her much in private- she tried to let it slide off her like water off the back of a duck- but it was embarrassing in front of company.  Now her stepsons were picking the habit up as well-- three against one. She wondered how she'd gotten herself into a situation where she experienced so much contempt  At first she had admired Roger for his stability and maturity.  "Just ditch him", she told herself.  "Trying to present myself as the female head of a family is preposterous".   In the back of her mind a tiny voice responded, "But if I leave this all the work I've put into this family would disappear.  It will be like I've accomplished nothing".

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 After driving a hundred yards or so she stopped the car and rolled up the windows.  Did her car really smell like a French w***e house?  With her allergies it was hard to tell but once she had a confined air space, the smell intensified. Yes, she decided, there was a disgustingly sweet smell emanating from under the front passenger seat.  On the floor she found a reeking, cardboard object, covered with pictures of roses.  It was designed to hang off a  rearview mirror.  The object's purpose was hilariously obvious. It was intended to mask the cigarette smell which also lingered in the car.  Her stepson Bobby must have "borrowed" her car, picked up some friends, gone on a cruise, and smoked an entire pack of cigarettes.  "One battle at a time",  She told herself, vaguely amused.  She rolled her windows back down, tossed the "air freshener" into the parking lot and steered her car towards her morning gig.

 

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Lara immediately liked the performance space. It was  a large, comfortable basement room in a local church.  The walls were covered with community notices that had probably been posted years ago.   She was performing for her community's annual  "Duggin County Health Festival".  People were milling around with their kids, sipping wine and gulping down homemade cookies while examining the desiccated human organs displayed by "health professionals" on tables to the rear.  Lara hoped she would have time to see the organs when her band took a break. She enjoyed the contrast between the wholesome cookies and the bizarre anatomical display.  Removing her violin from its case,  she began to tune up.    

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On break after a pleasant first set, Lara drifted towards the organ display.  The first display  was not of an organ but of the "Miracle of the Human Hand".  There was a gelatinous hand floating in formaldehyde, tendons hanging grotesquely out of its severed wrist. The tendons moved slightly,  like jellyfish tentacles, whenever someone nudged the table.   A real life desiccated hand was lying on the table next to the bottle.  It looked tiny and frail and she felt a surge of pity, wondering whose hand it had been.  A child's perhaps?  She held her own hand up to it and could see that, no, the bones were a normal, adult size.  Checking  around for surveillance cameras, she tapped the hand very lightly.  It felt like a bundle of old paper.  Accompanying literature explained the function of tendons.   She moved to the next table, "The Lung:  Dangers of Smoking".  This featured full-color, graphic posters of damaged lungs and dying people hooked to ventilators.   What drew her attention were the real desiccated human lungs lying on the table.  Each lung had been sliced in half, revealing damaged tissue that was darker than the rest.  From far away they'd looked like fallen leaves.  Close up they were more like tan-colored, natural sponges.  The damage was obvious as the corrupted tissue was discolored and rougher.  It was an effective display, though it would have been more dramatic with better  lighting.  "Wow," Lara thought. "What a pity the kids can't see this.  Maybe that would make them think twice about smoking."  Laura moved on to the next table, featuring the liver, but  moments later her band began to reassemble on stage for its next set.

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The music was easy.  Light, popular hits from twenty years ago mixed with "family folk" tunes.   Lara's fingers danced effortlessly and perfectly up and down the neck of her fiddle.  She regarded them with detachment.  That hand in the display had been pretty gross, she mused.   She'd never thought much about tendons.  Then she contemplated the damaged lungs.  She didn't smoke.  It occurred to her that there were so many lungs on the table that no one would notice if one went missing.  She could "borrow" one and use it as a prop for an anti-smoking lecture to her stepsons.  That would be effective stepmother behavior.  Someone in the family  would certainly listen to her then.   She studied the display discretely.   It was near the exit and a reasonable distance from the other tables.  "It's way over there on the end and not very conspicuous.  The lighting isn't even very good.  I can do this", she thought.

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The fair was over.  As attendees waved at each other and drifted out the exit, the festival's staff slowly began to clean up and repack their displays.  The lungs were still on their table and the people in charge of them seemed engaged in conversation.  Now was her moment.  Trying to look casual and professional, she swung her fiddle case slightly.  Her gait announced that she was (of course) only there to play music... not to steal a lung.   Her coat pocket was at the same level as the table top and one of the lungs was near the edge of the table.  It would just take a flick of the wrist.  For a moment, time stood still.  She adjusted her pocket so that it gaped open, brushed by the table and flicked her wrist.  The lung slid easily into her pocket.  No one noticed her at all.

As she drove home she occasionally checked on the lung.  It was very light weight, but it was solid and not disintegrating in her pocket.  Mission accomplished.  Entering her house it suddenly occurred to her that in all the excitement she'd forgotten to pick up tonight's dinner.  Damn.  She would have to go out again.  She fished through her pockets for her keys but couldn't find them because, of course,  her pockets were full.  Transferring their contents to the counter , she located her keys and headed back out the door.   She decided to go to the butcher's for an especially nice chicken, 

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The family sat assembled at the more-formal-than-usual dinner table.  It featured reasonable-looking food,  a centerpiece of roses and the family's "good" cloth napkins.    Mr. Dowell was laying into his food with apparent enjoyment.  Her stepsons were expressionless, all traces of personality obliterated by good manners.  Ricky fidgeted. obviously experiencing cellphone withdrawal.  He only ate the  salad since he had recently become vegitarian.   When he 'd first announced this decision,  Lara had tried to express her respect for "people who controlled their affective functions as a spiritual discipline".  The response total blankness. She might as well have been speaking in Swahili.  Lara suspected that Ricky regarded her as a tedious middle-aged experiment of his father's.  An experiment that was obviously doomed for failure.  Bobby (who she sometimes thought of as The Stone Man) stuffed dinner into his mouth with regal apathy.  Mr Dowell's  awkward question of "do you play baseball" had splatted against his stone wall of silence like a bug hitting a windshield.  Roger and John Dowell discussed complex aspects of their jobs, aspects which were beyond the technical comprehension of everyone else at the table.

Roger suddenly turned to her.  "You got this chicken at Greenmart, didn't you?  Dry as a bone.  Kind of like eating a leather saddle".   Lara sighed.  Obviously he was going to criticize her in front of his boss after all.  "Like water off the back of a duck", she  reminded herself.  "It doesn't matter.  Like water off the back of a duck".     Apparently it was her cooking that had been ruining their meals and not the low quality of Greenmart. "Oh and by the way I  tossed out that filthy sponge that was on the counter".

"Oh no!" Lara blurted. "That was a... a  little souvenir from my gig.  I played at the health fair today.  It wasn't a sponge.  It was, well, actually...  It was a dried up lung".

Roger, who had been reaching for the chicken, froze in place.  His forehead convulsed with revulsion and amazement. His hand slammed down on the table,  hard. "What?  You brought home someone's lung?" he exclaimed.

Magically, Bobby's glacial indifference disappeared.  He sprung halfway out of his seat. "You stole a lung?  Wow, that's incredibly cool".   His normally flat, grey eyes sparkled like silver.   Lara glanced at  Mr. Dowell,  who was politely indifferent.  His eyes announced, "This embarrassing family moment is none of my business" as he stared out a window.  He was wiping his mouth with his cloth napkin,  so she couldn't see his facial expression.

"Well, actually it's only half a lung,"   Lara floundered.  "It was the lung of a smoker.  I wanted Bobby and Ricky to see the damage that smoking had done to the lung".  Yet another failed attempt at being a stepmother. Oh well.  Why did she even care at this point?  She was obviously no good at all this.  She had to get out of here.

"You stole a cancerous lung and left it on the kitchen counter? Did you chop up the chicken on that counter?"  Roger's voice cut like a knife.

"No, she used that space to chop up Ricky's salad," Bobby sang out gleefully. His brother stopped eating.

Then, unexpectedly,  Ricky came to her defense.  "That guy probably died like a hundred years ago, right?   It's, like, an archaeological relic.  If it came from the festival  I'm sure it's sterile,  At least it's probably no dirtier than everything else in the house.  It's not like it's a road kill.  What did it look like?". 

Bobby positively quivered with excitement. "Is it in the kitchen trash?  Wow, this is really, really cool.  Can I be excused from the table, Dad?".  His eyes were riveted on the kitchen door.  Losing his fight for self control,  he bolted out of his chair and towards the kitchen.  A moment later he returned, hoisting a brown lump above his head.  "This is it, right?"

Mr. Dowell , stopped pretending this wasn't happening, glanced  over at the brown object, and them slowly rose from his seat.  "That's a lung?  It's... it's  so small. And what an odd texture.  Is it real?  I'd be interested in seeing that".  obligingly Bobby slapped  it on the dining room table .  Ricky contributed his internet knowledge,  explaining that the organ looked small because it was desiccated.  "It would be much bigger if it were moist, oozing with mucus and blood, and filled with air".  Mr. Dowell and her stepsons crowded together,  their heads nearly colliding above the lung.  "Fascinating",  Mr. Dowell intoned.  

"Where's the cancer?" asked Bobby.

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"Well, thank you for a delightful dinner and it was a pleasure to meet your family",  Roger's boss purred as he prepared to exit.  "Interesting evening.  It was a pleasure to meet you, Lara." He smiled and  shook her hand.  Lara was drowning in  reactions.  Relief that John Dowell hadn't thrown up on the floor.  Amazement that he'd been genuinely interested.  Fear that Roger was going to holler at her after his boss left.  Thankfulness that no one at the dinner had threatened to turn her over to the police for theft.  Relief that this aspect of her evening was over.

As she cleared the table she contemplated the evening's events.  Her stepsons now thought she was "incredibly cool".  Roger probably wouldn't holler at her immediately because she'd pleased his boss.  At the moment, all was right with the world.  It was still  painfully obvious that she'd need to address her marital issue, and  soon.    She realized belatedly that she now liked Roger's kids.  Of course,  if she left  Roger she would probably never see these kids again.  But it wasn't totally because she was a failure.  It was just a personality clash.  Most of the people at the table had enjoyed the evening and she had too.   "How could I have let this family situation erode me so much?", she wondered.  "How could I want stability so pathetically that I rejected my own spontaneous self?"

Ironically,  at this moment she felt that she was really part of the family for the first time.