A Clumsy Day

               “It’s been such a clumsy day,” my mother said when I called to see how she was doing.

               “What do you mean?” I asked.

               “Trouble all day — spilled my makeup kit in the bathroom, got powder all over. Broke my jelly jar with the hammer when I was trying to get it open. Lotta glass on the floor. Missed the turn going to the store, took me an extra hour to get there. Came back home, bag slipped out of my hand and broke open. Had to chase oranges all the way down my driveway.”

               “Don’t worry, Mother, those things happen. Did it last all day?”

               “Pretty much. Started to settle down after I ran over the neighbor’s cat, but then it got bad again—”

               “You ran over the Simpson’s cat?”

               “Yes, but it wasn’t my fault. He was in the driveway when I backed out to go to the dentist.”

               “You ran over him in your own driveway?”

               “No, it was up the street. He started running when I got in the car. Took me two blocks to catch him–”

               “What?!”

               “I was just trying to scare him, but I got clumsy. Came too close. He was a mean thing anyway, always hissing, spraying everything. Worse than your father. I told Al to keep their cat off my property, but he just laughed at me.”

               “What did you do with him?”

               “Al?”

               “No, the cat.”

               “Oh. The trash people hadn’t come yet, so I put him in somebody garbage can.”

               “How’d you get him in the can with your bad back?”

               “Some guy walking down the street helped me out. Told him it was my house and someone had run over my cat. I cried a little. He was real helpful.”

               “That’s nice. Won’t he tell someone?”

               “I don’t think so. I gave him $5.”

               “You think that was enough?”

               “It must not have been ’cause he pulled out a gun, waved it at me. Made me drive out by the airport, up some dirt road through the woods until we got to some iron gate with a chain around it. He wanted me to unlock the chain, but I couldn’t. All I did was break a nail, which made me mad. He told me step aside, he’d do it, but he couldn’t get it open either. Said a lot of bad words the way your father used to.”

               I could hear the ice cubes clink in her glass as she took a sip.

               “So then he yelled at me, get the jack handle out of the trunk, which I did. Took my time, made it look like I was having trouble walking. He told me hurry up but I didn’t. He got mad and grabbed that jack thing out of my hand and started banging away on the chain, so I started walking back to the car.

“He yelled where was I going. Waving his gun at me like I was a dog or something. So I told him, shut the trunk, what did he think. So he told me, hurry up. Then he put the gun down, started banging on the lock with both hands.

               “I kept walking. Car door was open, so I slipped behind the wheel when he wasn’t looking. Put the car in gear and jammed on the gas, but clumsy me, I put it in D instead of R.”

               “What happened?”

               “Knocked him down.”

               “What did he do?”

               “Nothing much, just kept moaning. Took two more runs to shut him up.”

               “Then what?”

               “I drove away. Why? You think I should have stayed, waited until he woke up?”

               I didn’t answer, just asked how often she’d had her clumsy days.

               “First time since your father and I went for a drive back in 1979.”

               “The year he died?”

               “That’s right. That same day too….Different place though…Good thing these clumsy days don’t happen very often.”