Wanted: Ruby Slippers!
Waiting at a red light, she stares out the car window to the piles of dirt brown honey combed snow. Rain streaks her window. Across from Bayfield Mall, a ten foot neon moose illuminates the evening sky. She checks her watch. 2pm. Not evening yet. A man in Caterpillar boots lugs a case of Molson to his vehicle. She steps out of the car onto a drainage ditch. A pile of cigarette butts and a plastic Barbie leg lay at her feet. The rain hits her in the face and splatters off her borrowed brilliant blue Fishbowl vest. The flashing blue sign of The Fishbowl Restaurant radiates back at her from across the crowded parking lot. Teenagers extinguish half smoked butts into rust colored snow banks and enter the mall.
“I am so spoiled,” she signs.
“What?” asks her husband, “Could you repeat that into the microphone?” He waves an air mic in-front of her face.
“I am so so spppppp-ecial,” she smirks, but the eye roll says otherwise. They enter the mall. Furry hoods come off folks and over sized snow-boots leave drippy muddy tracks across a taupe floor. Cigarettes are replaced with wads of gum and gaunt faces talk and smack under flourescent lighting as they roam the mall. Quietly they pass DollarRama, SkunkTrunk Electronics, and a rather vacant Japanese take out noodle shop. Before they round the corner for the movie house she sees it staring back at her like a beacon of hope. It is a cool glass of water on a sun soaked afternoon, it is a candle in a cave, an electric snow plow against a shovel, high speed access when you’ve been using dial up….it is a twenty foot by twenty foot wall poster of a man swinging a driver on a minty green golf course against a back drop of mountains and fresh blue sky. “Home!” she cries and runs to the wall. Stretching out her arms, she lays into it and hugs the illusion of domestic bliss that she has become accustomed to.
Her husband laughs and takes his turn at an eye roll. “Ahh, this is all part of my plan to move you up here sweetie.” A woman dragging three kids in down parkas tromps by snapping at them to keep up. They enter the ticket line. The smell of butter popcorn and hairspray eats up the oxygen. She feels dizzy.
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