On the Other Side of Perfect

I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks with the right kind of face. As I got older I realized my beauty could stun anyone. I saved my tips from the dinner that looked like it would close before the end of the year.

All my tips went into a train ticket from home to Los Angeles. Everything in my bones said my beauty would be discovered and everything in my world would be right.

I left behind a grey and dreary city that was on the brink of collapse. The local factory closed and nearly everyone was unemployed. I watched more and more graffiti fill the walls of buildings brick with boarded up windows.

On the train, I went through small towns and cities and I watched the blurs of green pass me by. I slept only to wake up to the smell of coffee with hope brewing high.

Shortly after I arrived, I met Derek. He was the man of my dreams with his big board shoulders and a sweet manner. His laugh filled the room. He lit up like a Christmas tree the first time he saw me.

We met at a networking event and he asked me out. After he whisked me away to every dream vacation I ever had, we settled down and got married within the year.

It was beautiful home in Beverly Hills and I invited all the local trade wives over. We learned how to churn butter because we could. Then there we made broths because we had time. I am pretty sure one of them wanted to learn how to make salt from scratch.

I found myself one day looking at the blue skies and the white puffy clouds. And it just looked a little surreal. It was almost like I was looking at a movie with the technicolor justified for effect. I went to touch it. There was a feeling like I had touched paper.

The neighborhood cat came out of a bush and rubbed my legs. I looked at orangesicle and said “that felt funny. I have never felt the sky before.” The cat meowed quizzically. “I know it doesn’t make sense. It’s quite perplexing and concerning.” The cat shrugged off like it couldn’t be bothered with a real conversation.

The day went on but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Maybe it’s like a present to unwrap. Or is it a green screen creating the perfect projection for all to see? What would happen if I pressed on it? Would something fall down? Would the world fall apart? Although I noticed I felt a bit scared and anxious like I could be destroying my perfect life, I also found the need to know what was going on overriding everything else in my brain.

Tomorrow! That’s when I will march outside to find out what’s going on. I marched down to the end of the yard where I touched the sky and I felt nothing. My head started to explore how to find the spot again. I paced every inch of that yard trying to find it.

Then I thought maybe one of the girls was being weird and slipped me some drugs in the freshly churned butter. Maybe I imagined it. While I am realizing it could be my imagination, the cat comes out and walks to the left of me but stops at the end of the driveway and turns back towards me.

“Hey buddy, what happened?” A loud meow that sounded like confusion came up. “Did you get stopped?” The cat tilts it head like she isn’t sure what happened. I walk towards the spot and I feel a solid wall.

This time I don’t doubt that something is there. So I go into the garage and I get a hammer but no matter how much I try and chip away nothing changes in the landscape. I am just physically exhausted from trying.

Before bed, I rolled over and said “hey sweetie, what would you do with a brick wall that wasn’t budging.”

“At work we have, wrecking balls.”

“Could you bring one home and show me how it works?”

“On the home?”

“No, just near the garage like at the sky or something.”

He rolls over and looks puzzled. “Why?”

“I’ve always wanted to see one in action that’s all.”

He comes home and demos it but there is no reaction like no toppling of bricks. There is no tearing of paper or any indication that anything has changed at all.

I tried to hide my bewilderment when I said “thank you sweetie.”

The next morning I am tried to shake the lack of finding out if there is anything behind the paper or the brick. Is it like the big bad wolf story and we skipped over the hay part? Will I go out and feel hay and knock that space over?

I walk outside to the yard and try to find the paper then the brick area and then the cat comes out. She had been to the left and right of me and now she walks straight down the middle of the yard.

And she disappears. I see what looks like the converted side walk move a bit like pieces of the world projected onto hay.

I walk straight forward only to find the grey and dreary world I left behind with even more dilapidated buildings.

I tilt my head and quizzically look at him while he looks at me.

“You can’t escape it.”