The Matriarch

This is a part of a collection called The Construct. It is about people reaching a moment of existential awakening in which they see their own place in the world, for better or worse.

Chamber One

The Matriarch

 

Sheila Bachelder sighed against the silence of morning.  She folded her sheets back from her body and groaned despite herself as she lifted pale legs and stepped directly into her slippers.  It had been a month, but she still felt like she’d been punched in the gut.  She turned around and, with a simple tuck, straightened the sheets into a neat envelope around the mattress.   

 

Stumbling steps led her to the coffee maker, where she dumped the pre-measured packet of bitter brown sand into the filter, senses awakening to the gurgle of the black machine as it spat noisily, a plastic infant sitting atop a pad of folded paper towels on her flawless white countertops.  She bathed her face in the healing light of her refrigerator, then sighed and closed it.  No more breakfasts. 

 

Sheila filled her coffee cup and sipped it neatly as she surveyed her home.  Each aspect of her living situation was filled with purpose.  Art and antiques with a common, unifying theme: that they guarded the space she didn’t need, and they maintained it with minimum effort.  The only upkeep required from her was the occasional dusting.  Still, for all her apparent tidiness, the nook of her living room that held the computer was fortified by walls of refuse, a dark stain on an otherwise spotless life. 

 

Coffee cups and wine coolers formed crenellations around the impenetrable basilica of her desk.  It’d seemed so real the night before, when she’d been alive with wine and optimism.  Embarrassment kept her from venturing over to the computer to clean the area; the barriers she’d constructed around it partitioned the closely-held secrets she couldn’t stand without alcohol.  It’d been most of  a year since she’d had a sip, and it’d hit her hard. 

 

This morning, her body felt as old and dry as the cruel nagging of her own self-doubt warned her it was.  She finished her coffee and stepped to the mirror, where she began the familiar process of applying her makeup. The look was minimal; aggressive.  She worked only to restore her face to its former glory, filling in the moats around her eyes with peach powder.  Forty wasn’t too old.  Forty wasn’t too old. 

 

She cursed gray roots.  So much work in maintaining an illusion, and to what end?  Queen of an inanimate kingdom, condemned to her throne room.  The computer was the only window out, and the view was ugly. 

 

Didn’t have to be alone.  But that seemed like her destiny; caught between her own regal self-worth and the unimpeachable approach of midnight.  She wore this makeup only because she didn’t want to look motherly.  She remembered long-running jokes in teacher’s lounges about the ones who treated students like their children and was determined not to become that person.  

 

Sheila glared for a moment at a pair of high-heeled shoes, placed neatly next to the clothes she’d picked out the night before. The heels were drunken optimism.  She held her breath as she holstered her breasts into a clean bra and leaned against the side of her closet for balance as she slipped a long black skirt over her legs, then stared angrily at the shoes with their proud pillars.

 

I’ve been here before; she thought, then sighed and pulled a pair of flats from the rack across the closet.  She slipped on a thin gold watch, strapped the large purse she’d bought specifically for work across her shoulder and stepped across her nearly immaculate home to her front door.   Another day. 

 

The weather outside her home was crisp, hours away from the passionate heat of the midday sun.  She noticed the clouds through a reflection in her luxury sedan’s tinted windows: they were organized into orderly rows like ploughed fields.  She backed out of her driveway and began the short drive to the school.

 

As she neared the only real obstacle between herself and her job, she maneuvered into the right lane and slowed.  She let a few cars pull in front of her.  A buffer between herself and the beggars that always looked so pitiful with their buckets and sad smiles.  They made her think about the ones she couldn’t help; the ones she had to write off as losses in order to ensure anyone ended up as any sort of decent human being at all.  It required an attention to detail to determine what each child needed.  If she couldn’t supply that, she had to cut her losses.  It was not ideal.  It was reality.

 

Sheila remembered when she felt a smug sense of satisfaction at pulling into a parking spot labeled with her name.  Now all it did was remind her of how stupid she’d once been.  Principal.  It had been a difficult transition, but it fit her plan.  Her very own factory where she could produce quality humans.  Rather than complain about the world, create a way to change it into an image she felt was more fitting.  If she’d had anyone to pass the world on to, it may have mattered.  Someone would enjoy all of the high-quality gentlemen and ladies she produced, she was certain. 

 

She took a deep breath before opening her door, summoning the air of tranquil authority that she wore as armor.  Within these grounds, there was no problem she couldn’t solve.  Or, that was how it had to look, anyway.  A long line of cars that stretched nearly to the side of the school slowly advanced, each compartment of the train unloading its noisy cargo, who ran excitedly, backpacks bouncing up and down, to play with their friends. 

 

She walked up and down the front of the schoolyard, a congenial tiger stalking her territory.  She made a point to make herself visible to the parents every morning.  She wanted to give the illusion that each student was personally cared for by yours truly �" which was as close to true as she could make it.  Throughout the year she divided the students under her care into categories based on what they needed most from her �" encouragement, discipline, or caution. 

 

One of the parents caught her eye.  Broad shoulders, neat brown hair, plaid shirt.  Maybe a carpenter, or some other craftsman.  A good, salt of the earth man, she imagined as she watched him carefully lift his son from the passenger seat of his pickup truck and set him on the ground, then pick the child’s lime-green backpack from the seat and place it on his shoulders. 

 

She swallowed back her tension as she found herself walking over to the man, as though she was still drunk with the endless possibilities for love she’d felt searching single’s ads the night before.  Even as she walked, she cursed herself for trying.  She’d come full circle on this issue so many times it made her dizzy.  She was sick of feeling inadequate.  It was the men around her who were lacking.  It wasn’t her fault that her loneliness seemed inevitable and inescapable.

 

Hated herself for thinking those thoughts, as well.

 

Sheila folded her hands behind her back and stood eight feet away from the parent and student, smiling graciously.  It was not unusual to strike up conversation with a parent �" in fact, in a way it was her duty.  If he happened to be good looking, she couldn’t be held responsible for that. 

 

“Hello,” she said, smiling first at David �" the child, a citizen of her Encouragement column.  He smiled meekly back.  The father took the bait, walking up to her and offering his hand.

 

“I’m John,” he said.  “I see you already know David.  He’s behaving isn’t he?”  She let him envelop her small, cold hand in his rough, warm hand. 

 

“Oh, yes,” she said, deliberately dipping each word in syrup before delivering it dripping to the man across from her.  “David is a real charmer.  I can tell he’s going to be a good man some day.”  Like her father, she dared herself to say but did not.  Piercing blue eyes, easy smile.    

 

“Well, I can see he’s in good hands,” he said, eye contact like staring into the sun.  A war was waged between their gazes, an invisible pressure dancing somewhere between the two of them, a tug-of-war on the particle scale.  She waited breathlessly to see if he would continue �" “how is the shepherding business?” he asked.  She exhaled into a smile. 

 

“Booming,” she answered.  “It seems like no matter what I do to the class before, they keep coming.” 

 

“Better a shepherd than a sheepdog,” he said, nodding at one of the teachers corralling a line of children into the school.  “You’ve come a long way.”

 

Sheila cocked her head at the man.  “Do I know you?” she asked.  John patted little David on the shoulder and sent him running toward the front of the school; the child looked back nervously, apprehensive at this unholy alliance of parent and principal. 

 

“I don’t want this to come off the wrong way, but you taught me in fifth grade,” he said.  “You taught me everything I know about long division �" everything I remember, at any rate.  You must have just been starting out as a teacher.”

 

She blushed.  “How embarrassing, I feel like an old hag!” she said, laughing even as her heart sank.

 

“Not at all,” he said.  “In fact, I think you look fantastic.  Hey, I know this is a little sudden, and I have to get to work, but do you think I could get your number?  I’d love to see how my favorite teacher is getting along.”

 

Sheila covered her mouth with a hand, trying to block a giggle from escaping.  She took a deep breath and composed herself.  Here she’d spent so much time convincing herself that trolling the internet for men burned the last moral fiber she’d had, and this fine specimen approached her from nowhere.  Sure, he was younger, but he had to be in his thirties.  Old enough for people not to care. 

 

“I can’t just write my number on a note like a student,” she said between tight lips.  “But I’ll tell you what; there is an open house next Wednesday night.  If you’d like to attend, we always need parent volunteers to help clean up after we’re done.” 

 

“Wednesday night?” he answered.  “Alright, you can count on it.  I’ll be there.  Until then, Ms. Bachelder…”

 

“Sheila,” she said.  Shoulders back, showing teeth, eye contact; she hastily recalled all the advice she’d read.  He lifted his left hand to wave goodbye.  There, on his ring finger, was a very distinct white band of pale skin. 

 

Sheila stared pointedly at the discolored flesh, nodding her head to let him know she’d noticed.  He turned to his hand and stared at it sheepishly.  “I’m sorry,” he said.  “I just, you know.  It’s complicated, all right?” 

 

She wouldn’t justify it with an answer.  Ms. Bachelder turned stiffly, presenting a shoulder to him, and began walking toward the school.  She heard him begin to gather a protest, but then stop.  His son still stood a few dozen yards a way, watching them with interest.  Sheila had to resist the urge to give him a piece of her mind.  She couldn’t do that to his son, though. 

 

The school.  It was the reason she was alone; the system that consumed her life.  And why?  To change people.  To make the world better.  She thought about the man behind her and froze in her steps, unable to move forward.  Another relationship stillborn, another failure she’d bred.  She felt a lurching sensation in her stomach, as though she was going to be sick; as though the entire world was shifting under her.  The Construct stumbled in its step.  

Author's Note

A flat, featureless amber plane stretches out in all directions. Above it, a blank, black sky. Lumbering across it, the Construct. An infant in shape, its size immeasurable due to the lack of reference points around it. It is all that exists here. It lumbers, slowly, moving in any given direction on its shoreless platform.

The Construct crawls steadily onward. Upon closer inspection, we find that it is largely hollow, built from a collection of chambers like the human body’s cell structure under a microscope. Within each chamber lies a human experience.

Reviews

[marcie]

I liked this piece a lot . Cant wait to read the following pieces xx.

[Cytosine]

Again, I wanted to give you constructive criticism, but I can't find fault with anything. The only thing I see is a slight punctuation error in "It was not unusual to strike up conversation with a parent " in fact, in a way it was her duty." But now I'm just nitpicking.