Chapter Three: Find Your Smile
In the months that passed since the day of that embrace, Marge had herself checked out routinely, when the results came back for her and Homer, she must have spent the next couple of days in a tear-stained delirious haze.
She was dying, she and Homer both.
All Homer did to cope was eat more. He had to cut all alcohol out of his system; there was something more poisonous in him now than vast quantities of Duff.
With each session of chemotherapy, Marge lost bundles of her precious blue hair, to the point there was a vast doughnut-shaped hole in the middle of it whenever it was straightened up.
She would look in the mirror each day, the way her daughter Lisa did a year or so ago when she felt at her lowest, and she would look for a smile, to have one brought upon by a miraculous burst of hope.
A smile that would never come.
She made her way downstairs and contemplated house work, she considered not devoting the energy to it, but then remembered there was more in the house than just her and her husband.
She required the energy; she would demand it in spite of her illness.
Maggie, Bart and Lisa had requested their dad take them to the hairdressers for a special request, Marge seized the opportunity to put her forced drive to good use on the house.
Mid-way through cleaning it, she put the television on once more to catch the latest episode of Medical Matters.
And, again, the characters of Frederic and Hilda were subjects to the most banal drivel.
"I have a crisis on my conscience, but I simply cannot tell you what it is, you wouldn't understand" said Sister Hilda, openly weeping.
Rainier Wolfcastle, portraying Frederic, couldn't emote one iota.
"I understand my work, I can learn to understand yours" he said with a wooden and unfeeling delivery.
"I am having a crisis...of faith" said Hilda, who demonstrated little to no chemistry with the star.
"Put your faith in me my darling" said Frederic, and kissed her gently on the lips.
Marge sighed, a little irritated.
"This is insane, there's no spark between them at all, all of the story's problems are on her, there's nothing they share anything in common with. If only there were some stakes to the relationship, something that Hilda could use to test how devoted she is to her own job and something that could humble this walking, unfeeling automation"
Inspiration briefly struck her, but it eventually was cast aside by the undiminished despair of her condition.
Could she risk putting together a story based on her and Homer's own experiences?
The door to the front door opened and Homer and the kids stepped in.
Marge turned and gasped at the look of their new haircuts.
They were bald. Each and every one of them.
Even Maggie.
"Whatever did you do to yourselves kids?" Marge replied.
"We wanted to show some solidarity Mom" said Lisa.
"Yeah, we're suffering for your sake just as Homer always suffers for ours" said Bart.
Marge's eyes welled up and she gave her kids a warm hug.
The kids were fine.
They were happy.
They were healthy.
And they were trying to have fun in order to spite a crisis that would cripple any other regular family.
Marge took to the typewriter and punched out a script. She would pour every bit of her family's ups and downs into this story, the fleeting bursts of optimism, the increasingly dour lows, and she would channel it into a seven day storyline that she hoped would make people aware of just what cancer means and how differently people cope with it.
She made her way back to the bathroom and looked in the mirror.
And there it was.
She'd found her smile again.
