(a short story I wrote for a fiction-writing seminar I took freshman year of college that I’ve tweaked about a thousand times since then)
When Margaret Wintergreen’s parents moved into a smaller townhouse a few years ago, they gave her a Tupperware box full of mementos from her childhood. Old birthday cards, art projects, yearbooks; the usual things parents keep to remind themselves of the time when their children were still cute and malleable. Margaret had accepted the box, as is customary when aging parents bestow things upon their children, but it depressed her to think of the items inside it. She didn’t enjoy being reminded of her younger years, when there was still hope that she would have a bright future. Now, her dreams are clouds: thin, wispy thoughts and memories that she smiles through only on weekends.
One night, after a glass or two of wine, Margaret finally built up the courage to open the container and surrender herself to nostalgia for a while. One thing in particular stuck in her head: a comment that her seventh-grade science teacher, Mrs. Foreman, had left on her report card.
“Margaret easily reaches the average skill level for her age group, but cannot surpass it due to her astounding lack of drive to achieve. Where’s the fire?”
For some reason, that line kept repeating in her mind. Where’s the fire? Where’s the fire?
The next morning, Margaret woke up feeling especially insignificant. Granted, the thought that her slightly overweight, five-foot-four, a-shade-too-pale-for-pretty body was nothing more than a dust speck in the vast, engulfing abyss of the universe was always in the back of her mind. Yesterday, she had just attributed that to the lingering effects of growing up without a defined religion. This morning in particular found Margaret pondering the point of her existence as she stood motionless in the doorway of her bathroom, held in the threshold by an invisible force field of existential crisis.
Soon she would have to emerge from the sweet isolation of her tiny third-floor walkup and join the huddled masses. The streets would be filled with young, well-dressed couples happily escorting each other to their executive jobs at shiny modern offices, the kind with floor-to-ceiling windows. Margaret didn’t dislike the couples themselves as much as she disliked the implications that young people in love make on humanity as a whole. Who are these people to think that their impermanent emotional connection means anything at all, in the broad spectrum of existence? After all, love is just the right combination of chemicals being released in the brain. It’s not as beautiful or insanely life-altering as Disney and Hallmark try to make everyone think it is. Margaret had experimented with boyfriends in the past, but found that after a few weeks of infatuation she was left with another person eating her food and inching their way into her half of the bed. So she settled into her own life, and didn’t see the point of inviting anyone else into her fortress of solitude.
Finally, Margaret stepped onto the cracked and yellowed linoleum of her bathroom, shivering as her bare feet met the cold tile. As she begun to pull her hair back into its usual ballet bun, it occurred to her that she hadn’t worn her hair down since high school. In fact, she’d kept her curly hair sequestered atop her head like this every day since graduation.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like her hair – in fact, she quite liked it, despite its faults. It was beginning to gray at the roots and on some days knotted up so badly in the back that she looked like she was growing a single dreadlock, but as far as Margaret was concerned, this was a small price to pay compared to the unmanageable mane of frizz that her younger sister had inherited from their mother. Margaret felt she found her signature style in wrapping her hair tightly onto the top of her head every morning. It looked fine, so why bother changing it? Deciding to wear her hair differently every morning could only serve to throw off her daily routine, which was not a sacrifice Margaret was willing to make.
For a moment, though, Margaret thought about leaving her hair down just this once. After all, she’d seen plenty of romantic comedies. The quiet, homely receptionist gets a new haircut and a push-up bra and suddenly becomes the hottest piece of ass in town. She changes her outward appearance and suddenly, poof! She transforms from an unassuming ghost of a woman to a bright star of feminine wile. She’s finally turning heads in the office she’s worked at for ten years. And then she gets promoted to CEO, moves into the corner office, and marries the sexy corporate lawyer who, of course, really loved her all along, yet somehow couldn’t bring himself to talk to her when she was still “ugly”.
So Margaret stood in front of the mirror, staring at the blonde curls hanging around her face for the first time in years. Why shouldn’t she have a rom-com moment? Today was the first day of the rest of her life, right?
But then Margaret remembered. She was a librarian. Everyone she worked with was female.
Well, that wasn’t strictly true. There was Steve, the janitor.
He used to be (and, as far as Margaret knew, probably still was) homeless. He smelled of cheese.
Certainly no Ryan Gosling.
And more importantly, Margaret wasn’t the type to think that wearing her hair differently would make her any more alluring to the opposite sex. She would still be plain old Margaret Wintergreen, but with the added bonus of compulsively and self-consciously tousling her hair so it wouldn’t get too limp. Not exactly romantic leading lady behavior.
Still, though could it hurt to wear her hair down just this once? It didn’t look that bad. If anything, it might at least elicit some reverence from Sherri, the youngest woman on the staff; a graduate student studying social work. Sherri was sweet and well-meaning, but you got the feeling she spent way too much time with her sorority sisters watching some incarnation of The Real Housewives and painting her fingernails while drinking something bright pink. She was the type of woman who would make comments like “oh, Maggie, if I had hair like yours, I’d never wear it up like that!” or “I read in InStyle that if you keep your hair wrapped up tight it’ll fall out!”
Margaret let herself pretend to be a Sherri-type girl for a second, tossing her hair over her shoulder and batting her eyelashes in the mirror. She even allowed herself a small, girly laugh. “Oh, Mr. Darcy, you slay me”, she said seductively to her reflection.
Then, becoming aware of how out of character she was acting, Margaret sighed dramatically. Being a Sherri-type girl was actually pretty exhausting.
Margaret glanced through the doorway into the rest of her one-bedroom apartment. Her father had bought it for her as a graduation present when she finished college and furnished it almost completely, intending the place to be a sort of “starter” she could live in while she looked for a job further from campus and began her exciting new life as a clinical psychiatrist.
That was five years ago. She was hired at a family counseling practice right after graduating, but was fired soon after.
Well, sort of. After a string of less than satisfied clients, her boss suggested she start graduate school classes in lieu of getting laid off, because she wasn’t “emotionally sensitive enough to continue counseling”. But instead of heeding her boss’s advice, Margaret handed in her two weeks’ notice. She realized that being fascinated with crazy people was not an entirely valid reason to enter the mental health industry. Most people that sought help were just looking for someone they could pay to listen to their petty first-world problems, anyway. So much to her family’s (and, to be honest, her own) chagrin, Margaret had taken back her old position at the campus library. It was the very definition of a dead-end job, but it paid the bills and was relatively easy work. Margaret preferred spending her days surrounded by books, anyway. Books were much better than people most of the time. Books didn’t judge her for her lack of a boyfriend, failed career, or barely adequate apartment that Daddy bought her out of pity. Books didn’t comment on her life at all. They just sat there silently on the shelf.
Margaret did feel a certain pride for the one item of furniture she had contributed to the apartment – a corduroy-covered couch she bought from a going-out-of-business sale at a small furniture shop back home. Her parents urged her to get rid of it, but the couch remained surprisingly comfortable despite its age. A furrow had worn itself into the center cushion from too many Friday nights spent alone with Chinese takeout and movies from the sci-fi/fantasy section of Netflix.
Margaret sometimes thought that her name sounded kind of literary. Like something out of a medieval novel. Lady Margaret, of House Wintergreen. With a name like that, she should be out riding a dragon over vast forests of desolate tundra, following her family as they conquer the seven kingdoms and avenge their father’s death!
Or, at the very least, Lady Margaret presides over a castle, raising her children into proper lords and ladies of the realm. A Wintergreen doesn’t earn minimum wage stacking books for eight hours a day, and Lady Margaret certainly doesn’t let her life sink into the metaphorical moat. A Wintergreen fights for what she wants!
Margaret often wished she was a character in any novel, not just a fantastical one. That way, when something in her life didn’t go exactly as planned, she would at least serve as an example for her readers. If Margaret were a character in a novel about her life, people would read about her and know not to take back the dead-end job just because it paid enough money for a roof over her head and a Netflix subscription. From the character of Margaret Wintergreen, readers would find inspiration to follow their dreams, so they wouldn’t end up stuck in a corduroy rut.
If Margaret were a protagonist in the novel of her life, this would probably be the point of her “I’ve gotta turn my life around before it’s too late” epiphany. She’d look at her dingy apartment and underwhelming job and altogether lifeless life and realize that the only thing keeping her from achieving her dreams was her own stubbornness. This would be the big moment, where she’d throw caution to the wind and run unafraid into the wild blue yonder.
Real-life, non-fictional Margaret Wintergreen was terrified of change. She was afraid to seek the great perhaps, because she didn’t know what that “perhaps” could even be, and the lack of absoluteness in her future paralyzed her. That, Margaret thought, was her problem. She didn’t feel compelled to move in any particular direction. She settled for a mediocre degree, mediocre job, mediocre apartment…mediocre existence. Mrs. Foreman was right. She had the skills, but lacked the drive to do anything with them.
Abruptly, Margaret realized she was still standing in her bedroom, in her bathrobe, staring at herself in the mirror. The quarter-life crisis would have to wait; if she didn’t hurry, she would be late to work. She dressed quickly, hopping awkwardly as she tried to pull on her boots and move forward at the same time. All she needed to do was make it to the kitchenette to grab her apple juice and bagel, prepared the night before and waiting for her in the fridge.
Just a few more feet –
And she was flat on her face. In her haste, Margaret had failed to notice the Tupperware container, still open where she’d left it the night before, on the floor of her apartment.
She lay there for a few seconds, then looked back at the box behind her and sighed.
Right at the top of the pile, staring her in the face, was Mrs. Foreman’s report card. Why had she even bothered to open that box anyway? All it did was remind her that her apathetic attitude had started even earlier than she thought.
Margaret picked herself up off the ground and walked to the kitchen. She took her juice and bagel from the refrigerator. Mrs. Foreman’s comments still lingered in her mind. Margaret opened the junk drawer next to the sink and noticed a box of matches. The report card continued burrowing into her consciousness.
She walked back into the hallway and stood over the box of mementos. Mrs. Foreman’s comments stared back.
She removed a matchstick from the packet, and struck it.
For a moment, Margaret thought about how dangerous this might be.
But no. She needed to get rid of it. She couldn’t make it through her day without knowing it was gone.
Margaret dropped the match into the container and watched Mrs. Foreman’s words char, and the fire spread to other papers in the box.
Then she checked her watch. She was definitely going to be late for work.
Grabbing her coat from the closet, Margaret reached for the door.
She heard the alarm begin to blare just as she locked the door behind her.
“Where’s the fire?” Margaret said to herself, and laughed.
d i s c o m b o b u l a t o r i u m 