Mayonnaise’s Last Day (originally published at Crab Creek Review, Fall 2007)
On a radiant Saturday afternoon Mayonnaise storms down the street to the outdoor market for her traditional self-birthday present (rarely has she celebrated a birthday with another human being). But for the first time in years, she’s happy. A month ago she received a sweet message from purplecow26 on the online friend service The Frog Pond and since then she’s felt that special spark, something she’s never felt before. Usually, anyone who meets her hates her immediately, and she hates back–she’s very good at it.
Mayonnaise liked the screen name purplecow26 instantly, remembering the song her mother used to sing to her as a child, before she became a wretch, before Mayonnaise became Mayonnaise, before the world turned against her.
I’ve never seen a purple cow.
I never hope to see one.
But I can tell you anyhow
I’d rather see than be one.
In fact, she has just gotten off the phone with her mother who has, in birthday tradition, once again assured her that solitude is a requirement of the few honorable, decent people in the world (like Mayonnaise and herself). Those who stand as pillars against the wicked.
Yet there is an undeniable bounce to Mayonnaise’s step as she heads towards the market. However, little does she know that there are four surprises from the past in store for her. Five if you count that love is the cruelest surprise of them all.
So happy birthday, Mayonnaise. It’s her twenty-fifth, and also her ten-year anniversary with the closest living thing to her: Sebastian, her African Grey parrot–this excludes her mother, of course, perhaps the only other person who exceeds Mayonnaise in her ability to repel human beings. Her mother’s one-time lover abandoned her to raise Mayonnaise alone, but today, Mayonnaise is about to meet love face to face.
The Freak
A few blocks down, Tommy Tucket is already at the outdoor market, after two attempts to climb the stairs to Mayonnaise’s apartment. He wanders among the stalls, aware that the crowd is staring at his purple hair, nose ring, and multiple tattoos. One tattoo says “hungry man dinner.” Another features a–surprise!–purple cow. Tommy has been so many different people in his life that he hardly recognizes himself anymore. Then again, most women online (and the occasional man posing as woman) turn out to be nothing like their profiles too. But lovelily25’s messages revealed such a touching vulnerability and understanding that Tommy fell for her instantly. That she didn’t include a photo of herself seemed to suggest someone searching for a connection beneath the surface. Still, Tommy’s nervous. In his mind, he has a picture of what lovelily25 looks like, but what if her picture of him and his picture of her don’t match?
At the apartment building door, Tommy was disappointed to find that lovelily25’s call button, number five, lacked that crucial name, but it’s just as well for the debacle about to unfold. See lovelily25’s first given name is Katherine Gelding, a name that once held a certain significance for Tommy. The fact is, he was responsible for giving her the name Mayonnaise, on her tenth birthday, in the fourth grade.
From their chats, Tommy gets that she’s lonely and misunderstood, but can tell she’s a good person on the inside. Maybe a little uptight, but in a cute sort of way. A week ago, he almost ran out to get a lily tattooed on his wrist after receiving a personal message with her home address–109 Cherrywood St., Apt 5–just in case she went to visit her mother and needed someone to watch her pet parrot. Then, a small cake appeared on her profile and because Tommy knows lovelily25 always gets sad on her birthday, he figured it’d be the perfect day to surprise her.
Ah, timing.
So Tommy has been trying to gather up his courage at the farm fresh milk stall and doesn’t see Mayonnaise enter the market. If he got a really good look at her, he might recognize that pale skin and strawberry blond hair. Then again, Tommy’s family moved away in fifth grade, so the two haven’t seen each other for fifteen years.
But Tommy isn’t the only one who has decided to pay Mayonnaise a little birthday visit.
The Car Wreck
Renee Thomas has just pulled up to 109 Cherrywood Street in her recently dented Kia. The front of the car resembles those children’s Micro Machines that burst on impact. An unopened bag of sugar sits in the passenger seat, poised to pollute the gas tank of Mayonnaise’s white Honda Civic. That bitch’s car didn’t have a scratch, Renee stews, scraping her long nails across the sugar bag. But it didn’t stop her from calling the insurance company and police. She remembers the sickly skin of Katherine Gelding and her indignance when Renee suggested that she shouldn’t brake so suddenly, and for no reason.
Besides the sugar, Renee has brought tanning gel, the kind that turns skin orange, to leave by the apartment with an anonymous note, a simple “fuck you, you pasty bitch.” She sees a Honda, though in her haste she forgot to write down the license plate. Like the accident, she shouldn’t have been in such a hurry, because today there are two white Honda Civics parked outside 109 Cherrywood. Renee sits, stewing, having opened the sugar, running her dagger-like fingers through the crystals. For the record, Mayonnaise owns the Honda just past the steps leading to the apartment.
The Meathead
The other Civic is owned by Rick Harris, “Rick the King” as a few hard-core NFL fans know him, “the King,” as he’d like to be known. Rick with his hulking frame (muscular as ever, he insists) is pacing on the second floor just outside Mayonnaise’s apartment, mumbling lines from Macbeth to himself. His less-than-stellar career as a third-string tight-end ended five months ago with a torn ACL–not during practice, but after a game when he drunkenly fell into a decorative lawn pool at a teammate’s house. He had been drinking too much that night, not because of that less-than-stellar career, but because he was thinking back to the pivotal (if he knew such a word) moment in his life. Tenth grade, when he had dreams of becoming an actor.
Mayonnaise played Lady Macbeth and Rick, in his maiden performance, was the profoundly un-pivotal character of Ross. But during the scene where Macbeth sees the ghost of Banquo at the dining table, Rick fumbled (as the expression goes), delivering an unintelligible rant that would have made a caveman ask twice. Mayonnaise berated him on the spot, before the entire audience. It was the first time he cried in public.
Rick, having just moved to the city, was wandering through the park a few weeks ago when he heard a vagrant (possibly an NYU student) delivering Macbeth’s “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” soliloquy. On the line “an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing,” Rick experienced the big three of negative human emotion: loneliness (women have never been able to see his gentle side, he claims), depression (at wasting seven years of his life watching big men slam together like pendulum balls from the sideline), and fury (which Rick would probably spell “furry”). So he recites his meager lines over and over, having planned to deliver a rousing monologue before–well, he hasn’t gotten that far in the playbook. But some sort of dramatic action.
There are some days that can’t be forgotten, that cling to the heart like a slow-eating cancer and move us like puppets on the march, days that cry to be remembered, days that change, accentuate, even distort essential character. April 15th has become that day for Rick, the day he cried; for Mayonnaise, the day she was forever labeled; and also for a recent graduate of El Chico Medical School watching Rick from Mayonnaise’s peephole.
The Cheater
Already inside the apartment is Kai Tome, the girl Mayonnaise nearly got expelled from college for cheating on a test their Junior year of college. Mayonnaise discovered Kai using a clear pen with hyper-small paper rolled up inside like a scroll. Glancing up, feeling the sickening gaze of Mayonnaise, Kai knew she had been caught. After class, Kai broke down and pleaded with her, explaining how vicious and driven her parents were, how they held tuition and loan repayment in exchange for maintaining summa cum laude status. In a wavering voice, she told of the pressure, the pure, unyielding pressure of following in her older sister Kaede’s footsteps. But Mayonnaise just stood there, hands to her side, looking on Kai coldly. A day later Kai was prosecuted to the full extent of the university code. Kai hates Mayonnaise for so ruthlessly turning her in and tarnishing a nearly spotless record, and for the crappy Caribbean medical she had to attend when all the top schools noticed the incident on her transcript. Most of all, Kai hates Mayonnaise because since that day, her parents would forever see her as the cheater of the family.
Kai’s friend helped her tracked down Mayonnaise’s address, credit card statements, and her profile on The Frog Pond, where Mayonnaise’s list of likes is roughly a tenth of her list of dislikes, which include: dumb jocks, Democrats, blisters, violent movies, people who use cell phones while driving, bums, fraternities, cheaters, smokers, punks, dirty dishes, drug dealers, and animals not on leashes.
Kai moved to the city for an externship a few months ago and decided on today, the five-year anniversary of the fateful test, to get back at Mayonnaise. At least this time, Kai’s done her homework. Unfortunately, as far as she can tell, there is very little to Mayonnaise’s life and thus little Kai can do to exact a meaningful revenge. However, she has found one weakness. Sebastian, Mayonnaise’s African Grey parrot.
Mayonnaise’s only friend.
Mayonnaise made Kai’s job much easier, practically icing on the cake, by skipping out of her apartment having forgotten to lock the door.
Love can be dangerous in a big city.
Kai’s inspection of the apartment confirms her suspicion. Hardly any photographs. Carefully placed couch cushions. Self-help books. Dust free. Plants, which Kai poisons with bleach and salt water (as they most likely represent Mayonnaise’s next closest companions after the parrot).
Then Kai notices that the bird’s wings aren’t clipped and settles on setting it free (to be mentioned, Sebastian the parrot is perhaps the only blameless life form in this story). However, due to Rick the King’s never-ending dress rehearsal, Kai is finding it more difficult to leave the apartment than it was to get in. Having done some research, Kai knows Mayonnaise is a creature of habit and will return from her weekly trip to the Saturday market, six blocks away, at approximately 2:35, which leaves her one hour. If only Kai had studied this much for the exam! It will all be worth it, she tells herself, when she takes the one thing Mayonnaise loves.
The Sickly Past
Meanwhile, Mayonnaise, on her way to the fruit stand, is being jostled by two sweaty frames. Dumb jocks, she thinks, like the ones who knocked her Tupperware lunch out of her hands in high school and wrote “Spoiled Mayonnaise pussy” and “Cream-cheese cunt” on her locker. To her right, two long-haired freaks are having a conversation, which has the crowd around them cracking smiles. Which makes Mayonnaise nervous.
“If we didn’t have hemp, then what would we make our rope out of, Jeff?”
“I don’t know. I guess I didn’t think about that. It’s just rope.”
“Just rope? Just rope, Jeff? I don’t think so. If we didn’t have rope, we couldn’t have built ships. And how, may I ask, would Magellan have sailed around the world without ships? Didn’t think about that, did ya, Jeff?”
“I guess not.”
“Magellan, Jeff. Magellan. Think about that. Fucking Magellan.”
Some people don’t deserve vocal cords to begin with, Mayonnaise scowls.
She breaks free of the crowd and scans the market, looking for the fruit vendor. Her self-birthday present will be a nice fruit salad, with cantaloupe and honey dew, and maybe blueberries, raspberries, even a Golden Delicious apple. Mayonnaise is proud of herself for appreciating the simple pleasures in life. Her pale face cracks a smile, but then frowns as she sees a small boy, maybe eight or nine, taking green grapes from a wooden bin. His mother is chatting idly with the grocer while others, Mayonnaise included, wait to be served. She watches, throat clenching, teeth grinding, imagining how if she were that little boy’s mother she’d rap him on the head. This is what happens when negligent parents don’t teach their children manners. He’ll probably grow up to be like those boys in elementary school who would borrow pencils and return them to her broken in half or with tiny teeth marks. There is so much injustice in the world!
This is how Mayonnaise is. Whenever she stays in a place for too long, she inevitably spoils.
To be fair, Mayonnaise’s view of the world wasn’t always so sour, and the little boy did resemble that other little boy who had caused her so much pain. Her birthday, 4th grade. Now she’s lost in that day, has been lost in that day nearly every day since. If she hadn’t displayed that slight sense of superiority (which her mother always encouraged) when receiving higher grade than him on a test or turned him in when he accidentally said “shit” on the playground, perhaps he wouldn’t have said anything at all.
Were Mayonnaise’s actions a twisted version of punching a little boy on the playground, a sign of affection? Is it possible she liked Tommy from the very beginning?
After all, Tommy wasn’t like the other boys. Even though he was charismatic and had a wealth of friends, he also had a sense of honor. He was nice to everyone, and everyone liked him. In fact, if Mayonnaise hadn’t raised her hand to tell Ms. Simmons that Tommy didn’t do his homework that day, then maybe he would have called her a vanilla cupcake. She was far from an ugly girl, and once could have been described as fair-skinned, a princess, classically beautiful. Yet when Ms. Simmons asked each student to say what food described them, Tommy, in a rare moment of cruelty, stood up and declared, “Everyone. Katherine is Mayonnaise.” And everyone had laughed, even the foreign students who didn’t quite understand somehow knew what he meant.
Tommy moved away before middle school but the name stuck. It followed her all the way through college, though she thought she had escaped it in the big city.
To be mentioned, Mayonnaise has never seen herself as beautiful since that day, and it seems fair to say that this inability has prevented her from viewing the world as such. How curious, then, that today she feels the warmth of love for the first time in her life. Even if purplecow26 hasn’t messaged her in days, not since she, in a moment of adorable immediacy and to her, an action of grave vulnerability, sent him the message about watching Sebastian. This might seem like a small gesture to most, but to Mayonnaise it meant the world.
How terrifying.
The Drug Dealer
Number four, Dirk Mesmer, her shadow, sifts through the customers, carefully studying Mayonnaise. He’s just been released from Fishkill Correctional Facility in Beacon, New York. April 15th, six years ago, his life changed forever. Just as Tommy’s been dreaming of lovelily25, and Rick of the stage, Dirk has been replaying Mayonnaise’s surprise birthday in his mind every day since. As the quack doctors Kai studied in the Caribbean would say, the crowd can feel Dirk’s negative energy.
Finally, justice for the girl who called the cops on him at the dorm freshman year for smoking weed. Unlike Kai, whose father used his clout to pull some strings, Dirk was expelled instantly. Funny how law bends, Dirk thinks. Flexible for some, rigid as a concrete block for others. He watches Mayonnaise test cantaloupes, holding one up to her ear while tapping it lightly, and notes how particular and cautious she is at determining which fruit is good and which is rotten. There she is, the girl down the hall who never had any friends. The girl who always did seem to get pleasure from making other people unhappy. The girl who ruined his life.
As Mayonnaise thumps the cantaloupe, Dirk hears that fateful knock on the door when the police poured into his room. The other drugs they found that day were the possession of his sellout roommate, who confirmed the existence of karma when he was struck by a car and killed four years later, when Dirk was rotting in prison. Karma for some, but not for all, Dirk ponders. Thump. A knock on the door and that was it. So much for law school. There was nothing to do but go into business. Dirk knows all too well that the world rarely gives second chances–too many interviews ending abruptly, not enough influence in his whole miserable bloodline to undo a felony. Drugs, Dirk thinks, are the best business in the world, but not what he would have chosen for himself. Then again, you don’t always get to make the choice. Sometimes that choice is made for you.
Happy birthday, Mayonnaise, he smiles to himself, breathing in deep, studying her. It’s your last.
Carnations
The grocer, an olive-skinned, heavy-set man with a thick mustache, has been watching Mayonnaise’s facial transformation, from her slight smirk to her stink face, the upper lip raised, to the slight gurgling accompanying her teeth-grinding as she dips into memories of her sickly past. Bad for business, he thinks to himself, a look like that. Even the customers are starting to notice. “Miss, try some grapes,” he offers. “They’re delicious.”
But Mayonnaise can’t hear the grocer, she’s so lost in 6th grade, when she decided that to be on the side of right and truth was more important than to be happy or to have friends. The popular kids had been sitting at a lunch table, though it was against school policy. The eighth grade lunch room monitor, too busy flirting with a boy, had been ignoring that fact. So Mayonnaise turned them in, reveling in the power of punishment. Then she sat, sipping her apple juice with the warmth of justice running through her, enduring their taunts and projectiles with a stoic dignity, a satisfied smile plastered to her face.
Tommy, at the florist’s stall one over, has been trying to decide on a fitting flower to get lovelily25 (condolences, all you romantics, but no lilies for sale).
“Take this, for instance,” the florist is saying, holding up a white carnation. “People see carnations, think cheap flowers. But they’re not. Know where the name carnation comes from?” A customer shakes his head. “Some people think, coronation. You know, like a wreath. Nah. Gave my first wife a carnation, a pink one. I told her, this is my heart I’m giving to you. Never mind that she…that she tore up my carnation two years later, the cheating–anyway, flesh, that’s what it really means. Flesh.” The customer continues to nod dumbly. Unfortunately, he is one of those people who elicits the life story of anyone he meets. “I’m a carnation,” the grocer muses. “Know why? Carnations last a long time, even in harsh treatment. They’re misunderstood. No one seems to like them anymore, but they endure, you know? Tough puppies.”
“I’ll take a rose all the same, thanks,” the customer says.
“Have it your way.”
“Excuse me. I’d like one,” Tommy tells the florist, who smiles.
“Just one?”
“Yes. Just one.” Tommy’s been open about his sadness and confusion online, though lovelily25’s tried to hide hers. He imagines surprising her, carnation in hand, explaining that they’re both just carnations, misunderstood, but resilient and beautiful. Tommy passes right by Mayonnaise and goes to sit on a stoop just outside the market, rehearsing. He wants it to be perfect.
Imagine his surprise.
Sebastian’s Secret
Rick the King has knocked twice, but then he hears footsteps within the apartment gets nervous and promptly forgets his lines. He starts again, building one word on top of another. If Mayonnaise hadn’t embarrassed him that night, then he might have moved to the city sooner to start his acting career. He’s not getting any younger, and his body’s been broken. His voice is all he has left.
“Smelly sock sandwich. Smelly sock sandwich,” the parrot squawks inside. “Why why why why why oh why oh why purple cow purple cow.”
This is the fifth time Kai Tome has crept to the peephole to watch the meathead outside dumbly muttering to himself, blocking her escape. Perhaps she could get around him, but not with the parrot, not with the cage. She briefly contemplated killing the bird but decided instead to kidnap it. Kai wants Mayonnaise to feel what it’s like to have something slowly slip away from her. Photos, mpegs, maybe even a web cam–www.watchthebirddie.com. The problem is, Kai knows she’s incapable of harming an animal. In fact, she always wanted to be a veterinarian, but her parents didn’t believe it was a dignified profession. Maybe she’ll just take the parrot for her own. She could use someone to talk to who won’t constantly compare her to her sister.
As Kai sticks her hand in the cage, Sebastian leaps to her arm, plucking feathers from its left wing, a nervous habit the bird has picked up whenever Mayonnaise leaves the apartment. “Love love love,” the parrot squawks, looking up as Kai giggles. “Love love love love love. Love love love love smelly sock sandwich. Love love love, why oh why oh why. Manaze Manaze Manaze.”
“Love?” Kai asks, eyes level with the bird. She takes Sebastian out of the cage on her hand and carries him towards the window. Being in the apartment so long has made Kai’s skin itch. Mayonnaise’s stink, her self-loathing, her unhappiness, coat the couch and carpet, stick to the antiseptically-decorated walls, cling like dust where dust has been cleaned so religiously. “Love who?” Kai repeats.
“Love love love love, smelly sock sandwich, purple cow purple cow, ouch ouch ouch.”
Knowing she only has another thirty minutes or so before Mayonnaise returns, she considers releasing the parrot out the window. Then she spots, stories below, a woman walking back and forth between two white cars, cursing. A knock startles Kai. She rushes to the door and, after looking through the peephole, opens it. “What?”
Rick the King is confused. Either Mayonnaise died her hair jet black or somehow became more Asian.
“Yes, uh, is this, do you own this apartment? I mean, do you live here?” The King’s problem isn’t that he’s got a bad memory. He just gets tongue-tied around beautiful women and Kai, with her sleek, cool beauty, is no exception.
“Who are you looking for?”
“Mayonnai…uh.” He’s forgotten his lines again.
“Mayonnaise?” Kai asks, a smile creeping to her face.
Flustered, Rick reaches into his pocket for a crumpled piece of paper. “Sorry, uh, I mean Katherine. Katherine Gelding,” he reads. “I’m–I went to high school in her.”
Kai cackles. “You don’t say.”
“Uh,” Rick chuckles nervously. “Oh! I mean–”
“Well, she’s not here, so what do you want?”
Suddenly, Renee charges up the stairs to the door, pushing Rick aside. “Where’s Katherine Gelding? I want to speak to her.”
“You mean Mayonnaise?” Kai asks, glancing at Rick. Incidentally, the name was passed along in much the same way, from old enemy to new.
“Whatever. Where is she?”
“At the outdoor market. Six blocks down,” Kai says, pointing. She checks her watch, wondering if this frenzied woman might buy her more time to consider her options. “She should be there for a while.”
“Thanks,” Renee says, clamoring down the stairs.
“White snow, white choc-o-late, white Christ-mas, Snow White,” Sebastian yells from the window ledge.
“What’s that?” Rick asks.
“It’s a parrot, stupid,” Kai says in a cool voice. “So what do you want with Mayonnaise?”
Mayonnaise Sours
Back at the market, Mayonnaise takes a paper cup of organic milk from the table and puts it to her lips, pausing as the green grape boy runs by, bumping into her. “Watch it, you brat.”
Dirk is so close he smells her orchard blossom deodorant, which reminds him of apple picking in Ohio when he was a kid, before his parents divorced. His throat feels stiff as he remembers how his father remarried when Dirk was a teenager, even while his mother, a prominent judge, was on her death bed. Dirk’s outside is as maligned and wretched as his inside, but deep within is a little boy, hidden beneath the cigarettes and ashes. He enjoys thinking about Mayonnaise, stalking her, watching that holier-than-thou strut, that stupid, blameless, strawberry blond hair, her perfectly untainted, sickly skin.
Someone’s got a crush.
Renee bursts into the market and picks Mayonnaise out more easily than the Honda Civic. “You fucking bitch!” she says, turning the heads of strangers like a tennis match.
Mayonnaise recognizes her slowly. “You’re…the woman who hit me last month.”
“You’re suing me? Your car didn’t even have any damage,” Renee screams, advancing. “Pain and suffering? Loss of lifestyle? Mental anguish? What the hell is wrong with you? I offered to pay…you, you bitch.” Sure she’s angry, but Tommy, looking closely enough, can see the pain of recent loss in her eyes.
The crowd turns to Mayonnaise.
“I had every right,” Mayonnaise snaps, putting down her basket of fruit. “It’s the law. There have to be rules in this world.” She exhales as the crowd leans in. “And you were talking on your cell phone.”
A gasp. And back to Renee.
“My father was dying in the god damn hospital, you miserable wretch. And I was consoling my sister.”
The crowd murmurs. Mayonnaise’s swing.
“That doesn’t give you the right to risk other people’s lives.”
“Then why’d you brake so suddenly?”
“What?”
“Why’d you brake so suddenly?”
Mayonnaise’s neck is hot. Her throat is constricting. Her tiny fists are shaking. Her bottom lip is trembling. She can feel eyes on her. “To teach you a lesson,” she snarls.
“Then you’re a miserable human being, Mayonnaise,” Renee says coldly, tasting the name as she tips the cup of milk onto Mayonnaise’s turtleneck. “Prediction. You live a meaningless life as a vindictive monster.” At that moment, Renee sees an empty bed in the hospital room, then her sister and her standing on primed grass watching her father’s coffin descend with a mechanical hum. “Mayonnaise,” she repeats. “You know what? Anyone can see how god-damned miserable you are. I feel sorry for you. Because no one will ever love you. Because people as horrible as you are always alone.” The crowd goes silent, a moment of street noise, then the spattering of unplanned applause.
Game, set, match.
“What are you all looking at?” Mayonnaise shouts, whirling around. “What are you looking at?” The sun is beating down on her temple. She flushes. The milk smells sour.
If you still don’t know who Mayonnaise is, she’s the kind of person who would wear a turtleneck in June. Renee’s pegged Mayonnaise’s character of course, but then again, you could say that Mayonnaise never really had a chance for redemption.
At the edge of the crowd, Tommy’s been observing the two women fight. Something twinges in his heart as he watches the paler woman run out of the market holding a hand over her face. What he sees, however, is not the wretchedness or ugliness everyone else sees, but vulnerability, like a delicate Chinese paper flower, like a minute of silence in a city that has none. Tommy’s greatest virtue is that he can see inner-beauty, which is why his outer appearance is so bizarre.
Or maybe that’s just his excuse.
Still, he doesn’t like to see people hurt. Imagine his shock when he finds out who she is.
But hey, love is hard.
Dirk follows as Mayonnaise races down the sidewalk to a stoop on a narrow side street a few blocks from her apartment building. If ever he needed proof that Mayonnaise deserves what’s coming to her, he’s got it. How many people has Mayonnaise infected? How many Mayonnaise’s has she converted? He’ll wait for her in the apartment where it’s nice and quiet.
Renee walks back to her car feeling vindicated by her victory at the market. Mayonnaise, Katherine Gelding, whatever her name, is the type of person who stands against decency and human kindness. A cancer to the world. Yet Renee can also see how obviously tortured Mayonnaise is. Maybe she’ll go up to the apartment and apologize. An act of understanding. Then perhaps the whole frivolous lawsuit might be called off.
Sitting on a stoop behind an abandoned building, Mayonnaise takes out a pocket mirror and looks at her red, bloated eyes, pulling her hair out in violent bursts.
The Trial
To her surprise, Renee finds the apartment door slightly ajar and can hear knuckles cracking inside. She’s about to leave a note when she overhears voices discussing Mayonnaise and, pressing her ear to the crack, listens in. Dirk Mesmer comes up the stairs slowly and, recognizing Renee from the market, creeps behind her.
In the apartment, dust pan in hand, Rick kneels down to clean up some glass. After discovering a copy of Macbeth on Mayonnaise’s bookshelf earlier, he smashed up a few figurines. Telling Kai his life story forced him, sober, to relive his tongue-tied portrayal of Ross, but Kai knows what it’s like to make a poor career choice. By explaining her situation, she’s made Rick feel better. Kai’s sitting in a wooden chair petting Sebastian by the window ledge looking out on the street. The two speculate about how their lives might have been different if they hadn’t met Mayonnaise. Rick would have studied harder his senior year(s) and tried to go to NYU. Kai would have volunteered at an animal shelter in Bolivia. Therapeutically, two share some of the other names Mayonnaise has been called over the years and finally decide to just tell her how they feel. Apparently, they’ve decided to talk about their problems.
Yawn.
Dirk has heard enough. “She deserved everything you said, and more,” he whispers to Renee. As she turns slowly to face him, Renee can smell Dirk’s ash breath. But there’s also something about him, about those eyes, a lost innocence, a hidden conviction, an undiscovered gentleness, that hypnotize her. Dirk smiles and motions toward the door. Renee nods, in a trance. He pushes it open, his left hand raised in a calming gesture as Kai and Rick stand in alarm. Dirk, who always had a talent for synthesis, has put together the strange circumstances that brought them all together today. In a reasoned, fluid manner, he explains his history with Mayonnaise, how she destroyed his life with as little thought as Rick’s destruction of the figurines. Then, Dirk expertly ties in all of their stories. It is no coincidence that three of them have had their lives changed forever on April 15th, Mayonnaise’s birthday. The fourth, Renee and the car wreck, is evidence that Mayonnaise lacks the essentials of human decency and serves as proof that she has not and will not ever change. Dirk urges them, as willing jurors, to convict Mayonnaise outright, to make her pay for all the pain she has caused. And they buy it.
The sad thing is, Dirk would have made a really brilliant lawyer.
It will go like this. Rick will deliver his speech and then redecorate her apartment. Renee will spray the lotion. Kai will liberate the bird. Then Dirk promises the perfect birthday surprise.
In preparation, they all rifle through Mayonnaise’s drawers and don pantyhose so that their faces are distorted like nightmares. They return to the living room to hide. Kai and Rick kneel behind the couch while Renee waits in the adjoining kitchen, opposite Mayonnaise’s desk and computer. Dirk locks the door and stands just to the left.
Aren’t surprise birthdays fun?
A few minutes later, the jingle of keys, then Mayonnaise bursts through the door and stumbles straight for the computer, sobbing so hard that no one, not even Dirk, moves a muscle. Of course, they have no way of knowing that the past twenty minutes have been the worst in Mayonnaise’s entire life. On the stoop, she relived a lifetime of punishment. Then, when she checked herself in her pocket mirror, she saw it for the first time–gray hair. She thought about purplecow26, obviously someone’s cruel joke, and finally accepted that she would always be alone.
Blind from the tears, Mayonnaise leans into her computer to check if purplecow26 has written her back one final time. One last strand of hope. She holds her breath. Empty. Nothing. A jolt of panic. A sickness in her throat. She straightens, taking deep breaths, telling herself to calm down. She’ll get through this. She always has. Mayonnaise picks up the phone.
Renee stairs in disbelief. Kai and Rick exchange glances. Dirk regards Mayonnaise indifferently.
“Mom. Yes, I’m OK.” She bursts into tears. “I’m…having a bad day.” Her lip quivers. “Oh, OK. I’ll, I’ll call back.” Her voice trails as she hangs up the phone. “Bye.”
“Happy birthday, Mayonnaise,” Dirk says enthusiastically, spreading his arms. He looks around and the others rise slowly.
Mayonnaise screams.
“No no no,” Dirk says, waving his finger. “Shut the fuck up.”
Mayonnaise already has the phone in hand, her finger poised to dial.
“Put down the fucking phone,” Dirk orders, advancing towards her. She freezes. “Hang it up.” Slowly, she obeys.
Rick looks to Dirk as he would his quarterback and Dirk nods. Rick is about to begin when Mayonnaise yells “Help.”
“Shut her up,” Dirk commands. “Bring her over here and sit her down.” He points to the center of the beige couch. Rick pauses, then grabs Mayonnaise, clamping her mouth shut, and sitting her down on the couch. The others line up in front of her. “Well?” Dirk says to Kai.
Kai looks to Dirk, swallows, then says, “You ruined my life.”
“Do it.”
Kai takes Sebastian on her arm and goes over to the window. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers.
“Love love love love love,” Sebastian squawks as Kai lets go. Gasp. Don’t worry. Sebastian, with his one good wing, glides in circles down to the street.
For several minutes, Mayonnaise sputters against Rick’s meaty hands until finally, she stops fighting. On cue, Renee sprays lotion throughout the apartment, on the paisley couch, the television, the computer. Kai watches Mayonnaise curiously. She seems to be in another world entirely.
“Could I try that speech now?” Rick asks. “I’ll need my hands, of course.” He turns to Mayonnaise, releasing her. “I memorized this for you, so please don’t interrupt.” He closes his eyes, exhales, then opens them as he paces across the living room rug. “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps in this pretty…”
Silence. All eyes on Dirk. Turns out that facing the barrel of the gun in Dirk’s hand makes Rick forget his lines just as fast as a pretty girl.
Renee starts to tremble as Dirk, screwing on the silencer, directs the gun at Mayonnaise. Kai, maintaining a surgeon’s calm, eyes the phone.
“Mayonnaise,” Dirk begins. “Do you know who I am? You should. You took my life.” Mayonnaise squints in between tears, trying to place the voice. She’s shivering. “You can’t imagine what pain, what torture you put me through. They are the jury, but I am the executioner. And you will pay for what you did and for the life you’ve led. For what you’ve done to me.”
“Did you deserve it?” Mayonnaise asks in a small voice. “Well, did you?”
“No,” Dirk says, shaking his head. “No. I didn’t deserve it. I was just a kid.”
“Look, I think it’s only fair that I…that I get to do my part,” Rick interjects. “After all–”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Fine, but–” Rick’s staring at the gun. Didn’t he already get Mayonnaise back in high school? He remembers the play, how confusing it was to tell who was right, who was wrong. Was Macbeth to blame for his actions, or was he a victim of fate? But who is Macbeth? MacDuff? Is Rick finally Ross?
Sure enough, Mayonnaise is the ghost.
“Happy birthday, Mayonnaise” Dirk says, clicking off the gun’s safety. “I’ve been waiting for this a long time.”
“If I could say a few words, first,” Rick says, taking a step towards Dirk. He’s scared out of his mind and trying to stall. The King’s not so stupid that he can’t recognize when his quarterback’s about to throw too deep. Rick’s a big guy and he could flatten Dirk. If he were just a bit closer.
“Mayonnaise, for all your crimes,” Dirk continues. “For all the pain you’ve caused the world. Do you have anything to say in your defense?”
“I don’t care,” Mayonnaise cries. The thought of dying is welcome compared to living with the emptiness which now pervades her entire body, a horrible new pain that makes her numb and fooled her into thinking that someone could actually love her. “I don’t care,” she says finally, going limp.
“Love love love love love.”
A knock on the door. Everyone turns to Dirk. Rick the King tenses, wondering if he’s about to screw up yet another scene of his already bungled life. Another knock. Tommy pushes the door open and enters hesitantly, cradling Sebastian in one arm. “Purple cow purple cow, love love love love love.”
Mayonnaise twists around and stares at Tommy. He’s holding a single white carnation in his other hand. Her mouth tastes like vomit.
“Who the fuck are you?”
But Mayonnaise knows. Mayonnaise knows.
