Author's Note: All the places mentioned in this story are real. The Chicken and the Egg, Fantasy Island, Ben and Jerry's, the book store, etc. are found in Long Beach Island, which is on the Jersey Shore. A beautiful and nice place to vacation. "Oh Pure and Radiant Heart" is about the three men who helped create the atomic bomb time traveling to today. Beautifully written and not mine. Read it.
—What I'm telling you, said Szilard, —is that it's coming to a head. History does have an end: ask the dinosaurs and the Carolina parakeet and the giant sloths. The drums of the very last wars are beating.
--Lydia Millet's "Oh Pure and Radiant Heart"
When she wakes up, she discovers that it's raining. It's not just drizzling—this rain is heavy, unrelenting, and a symbolic deluge. She smiles—so she will have a reason to stay in the house all day.
She walks down to the kitchen to see if there is anything she can make for breakfast. She opens the cabinets and finds that there is only cereal—and cereal is unappetizing for her ever since she watched the documentary on it last night. It is better not to know how the food one is about to eat is made. She finds it slightly creepy to think of all the dead men who slaved over making the perfect and most profitable cereal (Post and Kellogg…sort of how she is slaving away to make the hospital profitable and run smoothly, except she won't ever get her name tied to anything permanent.) She closes the cabinets.
There are Tostitos and Lay's chips, but she can't eat those for breakfast. Even during college, she was not one of the "let's do pizza for (insert mealtime here)". She tried to eat healthy and it enabled her to fend off the "freshmen fifteen." But none of that matters, considering she only had the chips and cereal in the house.
"God, why couldn't I have bought other edible things?"
She had planned to eat out the rest of the week, but she was now currently involved in dodging a possibly unstable stalker, so that meant she would be eating in the rest of the week. And she had only made it through a three of the places she had wanted to go to!
He's not mentally unstable, the (in)sane part of her brain whispers.
She sighs and grabs the bag of Tostitos. She crunches on one as she pads her way to the living room. She flicks on the big screen television (no, she is not compensating for anything). After changing the channels a few times, she finds that MASH is not currently on any of the one hundred stations. She sighs (oh, satellite dish how much I miss you! Cable just doesn't compare!). She finally settles on watching Match Game on the Game Show Network (she can't figure out why she's drawn to thirty year-old television shows. It's not like the seventies were a particularly glorious decade.)
So, she settles in on the leather couch and slips the heavy blanket over her. As she drifts aimlessly, immersed in her thoughts, she wishes that she had a good girl friend. She has Marissa and Maggie whom she plays tennis with whenever they are available, but they don't count as friends. They are simply convenient. House is not a friend, just an employee. That really goes for all the doctors. She and Wilson used to be friends, but that was when they were happy, single, and naïve. Now she runs the hospital and doesn't have the luxury (or the ability) to gain friends. She's too tied to her work to ever get a personal life. And if she did have a personal life, it would be on her terms.
Men, she finds, don't like her need for control (or at least that's what she tells herself as the rain slams against the roof and Gene Rayburn charms the audience.)
She hopes that it rains all day.
;';
This, she thinks, this is a pathetic existence.
If she realizes that the only two men who will ever be the men for her are Richard Dawson and Alan Alda, something is terrifically wrong. She's spent too much time at the hospital, and, among all those sick people, she must have lost her sanity between IVs and bedpans. Men…why does she care so much?
She gets off the sofa. She's going to get ice cream. There are two Ben and Jerry's on the damn island and she has not made use of either of their facilities. It's Ben and Jerry's (and it's terribly clichéd, but deliciously so!)
She clomps up the steps and rushes into her bedroom. It's still raining, but she's been in her pajamas all day and she hasn't showered. She stands in front of the mirror and contemplates herself for a few moments. Her hair is okay (liar). It's tangled (a rat's nest), but manageable (with loads of sticky gel.) She will change, but it's her face that bothers her the most. It's sagging and she looks tired (she is.) The decision lies there before her—shower or instant gratification. She smiles when she remembers a needless lecture by a history professor once (boring.) She decides to take a shower.
It's a quick shower—she barely threads the shampoo through her hair. Cuddy steps out of the shower and commences to dry her hair. When she finishes (after a good ten minutes), she goes out to look through her (large) suitcase.
She riffles through the clothes and discovers her blue-green a-line skirt, which she takes out. After a few more minutes, she finds the sliver tank top she wears with the skirt. She changes into the outfit, slips on her white slides, and lets her hair hang loose.
Cuddy leaves the house and gets into her car. It's too far to walk (even though the rain doesn't bother her) and her shoes give her blisters within the first five feet on walking anyway.
So, she arrives at the Ben and Jerry's in record timing. Although there is a prevalence of police officers on the island, she has so far gotten away with speeding down the main street (naughty, naughty.)
She parks and gets out of her car. She thanks her favorite deity (God, Buddha, Allah, etc.) that there aren't any meters here. The town thrives off tourists—no use taking their quarters in the meters when the businesses could be profiting.
Leaving the umbrella in the trunk, she ventures across the street in the rain. Her hair (still wet from the shower) seems no different and she worries briefly about her clothes. It is only water, though (two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen.) There aren't many people at the ice cream shop and she approaches with a hint of trepidation in her right foot and a bounce in her left. She stares at the long list of choices (so many! God bless America.)
Her eyes caress the list like they would a man's body (Do. Not. Think. Of. Men.) She hates similes and especially that one. She shakes the thought out of her mind and decides she should make a choice.
She's always been one for irony—she tells the teenage boy at the window that she could really use an "Apple-y Ever After."
"Man, look at that. It's a Rolls-Royce," one of the workers says to another.
The man taking Cuddy's order continues to make her treat, but she swivels her head slowly. Sure enough, Joe is emerging from the car. She debates whether or not the "Apple-y Ever After" is worth it.
It's too late, because as the boy hands her the ice cream, Joe comes up from behind her, let's a hand drop on her shoulder, and smiles at the cashier.
"She's with me."
Cuddy can see the twinkle of amusement in the young boy's face. Rich bitch rhymes quite nicely. She wants to tell him, though (for reasons that are purely human) that she isn't with this man. She wants him to know that she's as ordinary as he is (ordinary—if ordinary means lonely and overly cautious in every aspect of her life.)
"No, I'm not. Here," she thrusts a five dollar bill in his direction. The teenager takes it and rings it up with half-an-eyebrow arch. He hands her the change back.
"Have a nice evening."
Well, at least she's not buying condoms.
She turns around to exit the building, but Joe grabs her elbow gently.
"Please, you skipped out on dinner last night, which was unspeakably rude. But, I don't know. There's something about you," he urges, while his children stare speechlessly at the very long list (the same on she had compared to a man earlier.)
He holds out his hand.
And it's now that she realizes everything lurks just underneath the surface, waiting to escape. There's her endless sadness and her simmering humor. There's happiness somewhere, but she's too smart to let it out because it's fleeting and if she lets it out she'll never get it back…and she can't take short bursts of happiness because it ends, and it ends…and it's over.
She can't take his hand. She can't. She can't even let him pay for the ice cream because she's an independent woman and she'd rather self-implode than let a man care for her. Because she's a strong woman. Because she's self-serving. She's controlling, and, oh God, how can any man want that? It's her defense not her weakness!
"No, please, just leave me alone."
"We were meant to find each other."
"If we were meant to find each," she snarls, "we would have found each other years ago. Go."
But he doesn't leave, so she does. She doesn't wait for men to make up their minds. She wants love, but she doesn't want commitment. She wants friends but she doesn't want drama. She wants the world on a silver platter with a spoon to drink the oceans and a fork to eat the continents. But that doesn't happen and it never will.
Things—these things that make up life, are going to tear her apart. She can't figure it out and she walks down the street blindly.
Her sunglasses fall over her eyes and the world's darker than it normally is. There are lights and the lights are penetrating, pinpricks of fake starlight. There's a pain…oh, it hurts! It's just her head…it's just a headache. It's just everything she never really wants. It's the weight of the world falling back on Atlas' shoulders. It's her mother twirling in the kitchen and taking pill after pill…mother's little helper…and there's space, and carnival rides, and sidewalk, and ocean, and a man named Joe.
The "Apple-y Ever After" gets dumped in a trashcan once she realizes that she's been clutching it since she left the store. She attributes it to her sudden stomachache. (Technically, it's called buyer's remorse.)
And when she finally arrives home, she finds her cell phone ringing with a message from House. She can't deal with him and his need for her authority to make things happen. She's tired of making things happen. She throws the phone on the ground and lets it rest there. It's indestructible; she's not.
So, she collapses on the bed and cries when Alan Alda comes on the screen. Now, that's a doctor, a man who cares, who knows war is wrong, but saves the lives anyway. He's House Lite. And who is she? She's insignificant. She doesn't save lives anymore—she balances budgets. She makes concessions to assholes and board members who pretend to save lives. She prays to God and receives her answers in dollar signs and widowed men.
And then Mike Farrell comes on the screen and he's Wilson. There's sensitivity and warmth and sarcasm and he's a foil—just like Wilson's a foil to House. They're all just foils for each other (because the world spins on an axis that's tilted at 23.some degrees and aims at the sun. There is no decent reason.)
She could go through the cast (and she does) as each one appears on the screen. She relates them to a person on the staff and she always comes back to the fact that she loves a thirty year-old television show more than anything else in her life. It's sad (the show and the fact), so she gets off the bed and goes downstairs.
She wanders into the kitchen, opens the refrigerator, and bends down to grab a chocolate-vanilla-chocolate pudding. She takes it out and goes to the drawer to get a spoon. She sticks the metal into the sugary concoction and goes upstairs.
After she finishes the plastic container of pudding, she sucks on the spoon. She ends up sucking on metal with the taste supplemented by her saliva. She realizes that she sounds and acts like an angsty teenager, but she shrugs the thought off because she can't deal with it.
She is on vacation, of course.