Hospitality Inn Page #3

• Short story

								

     She resolved to demolish the Gothic mansion and build a smaller dwelling on the foothill that overlooked it. Her final decision was a rustic log cabin, and not just a log cabin but an extremely bare one, greatly deprived of modern comforts. 
     She embarked with determined strength. She knew that it was a painful step she was taking and that she would have weak moments, but failure was not an option. 
     She melted down into her Turkish corner and told the wall to open the panels of the mirror so she could see the pathetic blob that her adult self had become. She mentally etched her own hideous image for use as a safeguard against any threatening temptation she should encounter on her mission, and once the fitness guru sent her his ideas for the cabin, she placed her orders, discussed her plans with the builders, and then put them to work.
     If anyone saw the cabin under construction and asked her to explain, she just said she was building an extension and then changed the subject, and once it was completed, she sent a message just saying that she was going on a health retreat and would be unavailable for a while, even to her closest friends. She dismissed her staff and installed herself in the cabin with only the most essential items and immediately had the rest of Walnut Meadow completely destroyed and leveled flat to the earth. The old house was knocked down, crushed, and pulverized, the stained glass shattered, the creamy marble smashed, the electrical wiring uprooted, until nothing was left of it except rubble and a broken birdbath.
     Standing in what was once the background of a beautiful mansion, the squalid, lonesome cabin consisted of only one large room and a toilet, not good enough for the town beggar. The mismatched furniture looked too flimsy to support Sheli, and the floor was cold. The scant, generic cloths, about the size of a washboard, served a number of purposes such as a tablecloth or a curtain.
     Sheli, though, was somewhat enchanted. All fresh and brash, it had all the rustic appeal of a ski lodge but without any of the affectation, and it seemed simple enough; she would just have to cook and clean, and there was very little to cook, and it was a very small place to clean.
     She sat down to chop carrots at the small table near the stove.
     “So, do you think you can make a go of it?” asked Nancy.
     “Only time will tell.”
     “You had such a lovely house. I really loved your grand piano.”
     “That’s the past, Nancy. I’ve got to keep my mind clear. If I think of the old house, I’ll get sick, not because I miss it, but because it was part of my other life as the other Sheli, the gross, sloppy, debilitated Sheli. My new life starts here.”
     “There’s a new pastry shop just opened up in town.”
     “I don’t care.”
     “Oh, what would it hurt just to have one chocolate cookie?”
     “What would be the purpose of that?” she said, pointing her knife at Nancy.
     “Come on, Sheli. What would you do, right now, if I handed you a chocolate-covered doughnut on a plate?”
     “Squash it.”
     Towards the evening, Sheli started to feel weak. The wood started to take on the appearance of chocolate, and the cool draughts reminded her of the refrigerators she had once owned. The cold, gloomy evening sank into her like a tar pit.
     She finally found it all far too harsh and checked into the inn in the village and ordered room service. She thought about what could make the experience more tolerable. No new ideas.
     In the morning, after the inn’s maid cleaned her room, Sheli went downstairs to greet the innkeeper and fill up her plate at the buffet. She sat by the fireplace and conversed with a retired doctor who was traveling on vacation. Sheli admired the elderly woman’s dainty appearance.
     Their conversation carried on after breakfast, and Sheli explained the circumstances of her staying at the inn and expressed her frustration. As they sat in the lounge, the doctor listened to her complacently as if she had heard similar stories many times before. Sheli felt a sense of relief.
     The woman scooted an empty bronze ashtray aside and moved her green tea a little closer. “This all seems a little bit rash, don’t you think?”
     “I love my new cabin. This is right, I know it. It’s not the program I’ve started, doctor; it’s me. There’s something wrong with me.”
     “There’s nothing wrong with you,” said the woman. “You’re just a human, a human being who’s been misguided. Let me ask you something: if you look at me, do you think I smoke?”
     “Do I think you smoke cigarettes? Definitely not.”
     “Well, I used to be a chain smoker, smoked a pack a day, couldn’t get through a day without one. And then, one day, a day like today, I was sitting on my living room couch, and I turned around to look out my window at my patio and noticed so many dead leaves on it. I wondered how long they’d gone unnoticed, and I thought, ‘If I were a patio covered with all those dead leaves, I would have just gotten used to them by now. I wouldn’t want anything to change. I would just want to remain covered in dead leaves forever.’ But I knew, that to be a happy and dignified patio, it had to be a proper one, not a patio buried in leaves. 
     “As I continued thinking along this line, I went outside, rake in hand, cigarette in mouth, and I cleared one small swipe of leaves. ‘Maybe that disturbed the patio a little,’ I thought. ‘But, if it did, it disturbed it only a little, not a lot. And now it’s one swipe toward being a better patio.’ I took another swipe. I thought, ‘That swipe didn’t hurt much either.’ I took another and then another until the whole patio was cleared of leaves. And then I said, ‘Now that looks like a happy new patio.’ 
     “That gave me the idea that quitting smoking could be gradual, and thereby, not so difficult. It made me think, ‘What if I swiped one rake of leaves out of my life? What if I smoked one cigarette fewer, or even one half a cigarette fewer, each day? How painful could that be? And if I smoked less and less each day, maybe I could eventually be like the patio: happy and new.’ And that’s just what I did. I went to the store and bought a pack of cigarettes and a notebook. I smoked a pack of cigarettes minus one half and noted that very thing on the first day’s page: 1 pack minus ½ cig.” 
     “You are such an inspiration!” cried Sheli.
     “You see how I sawed with the grain rather than against it? We are just human beings, natural creatures, not robots. You work with nature; you guide it slowly toward its desirable state. 
     “I kept logging in my notebook, and after the cigarettes, I went to the nicotine gum, and then, from the nicotine gum, I switched to coffee. That was a triumph. And I haven’t smoked a cigarette in nearly 40 years.”

								Rate this book:5.0 / 1 vote