The piece of life people share with us can be called a slice, but it’s barely that. There was a woman I knew nearly 40 years ago when I was a work-study student and she was my supervisor. Our work was rote. We numbered and organized boxes and boxes of projector slides. But the genius in mindless work is in the conversations it buoys.
“Mrs. B.” seemed to be 50, but when you’re 19, everyone over 40 seems to be 50. She had a permanent smile and a whiskey voice. And she had structured hair like one of the witnesses on the Perry Mason show, the 1960s episodes.
“I could kill my ex-husband, but he’s dead already. He was an alcoholic and lost everything. I had a 3,000 square foot house. I never worked until the divorce.” She said.
She had more versions of that small slice than lipstick-laced cigarette butts. And the portions she didn’t tell, appeared in my imagination. I imagined her handcupping heavy crystal high ball glasses. Smoke and caviar mingled in their sunken living room just above the lazy Susan of deviled eggs and smoked salmon.
Mrs. B kept her relationship with the past alive. But there was more....
I only worked with her for one year, but I saw her again.
One night I was out with friends at a nightclub. The band asked me to sing. From the stage, I looked at the dance floor and saw Mrs. B. dancing, smiling and slightly tipsy. She was having a great time.
I’m in my 50s now and I know how it feels to be propelled into a life you didn’t choose. Now I understand why the rearview can be your slice of life of choice, if the present is routine and the future, cloudy.
I thought about Mrs. B the other day, and our endless hours surrounded by thousands of metal slides. Her talking while I was grasping to understand it all. But the best memory is Mrs. B dancing. At 19, dancing was everything. It purged depressions, bad grades and two-faced friends. Dancing was the way to freeze a good time; a slice of life.
Of course we didn’t stay in touch. But I can see her face like yesterday. The woman I don’t know, but won’t forget. I never learned her entire story, just the piece that made way into the slide room and eventually the dance floor.
