Planner (from the Munich Tales)

PLANNER
By Michael Kroetch

She can´t talk about her parents. She has balloons and brightly colored cards placed carefully around the apartment to make it cheerful and full of joy. She smiles often at herself in the mirror. She tries to look only at her smile and not the rest of her body. She knows her weight is a problem of greater importance with each passing year, but like so many things, she won´t talk about it. There are the day´s plans to go through. The party. She can talk about that. It is safe. It is in her day planner book. It is organized. There is a beginning and there is an end. A time when it will start and a time when it will be over. In her closet is a carefully labeled transparent plastic box full of her party materials. This is where all her parties are born and where they go to be buried once they die. Today´s party is for one of her friends at the office. They don´t know each other well, but pretend to be close. It is always awkward when they run out of things to say to each other. She pulls her hair back behind her ear in such moments and straightens her dress and pulls her knees together. She likes to give parties. She likes the excitement and hearing people´s voices when she calls to tell them about when to arrive. Hardly anyone ever arrives when she tells them to and they rarely leave at the time she has written down in the day planner. This bothers her, but not enough to ever say anything about it. She wants to be a good hostess. The friend from work whose party it is likes to drink a lot and sit on men´s laps. She hopes this will not be that kind of party with lots of kissing. She doesn´t mind that people kiss and do other things afterward, it just makes her feel awkward because no one ever wants to do anything like that with her. But the lack of such activity for her really is okay because it isn´t in the day planner and would lead to a mess, and she doesn´t have room in her life for a mess. A mess would need to be talked about and she already has enough things that she can´t talk about and some new mess on the pile would be more than she could take. Her mother would like to talk to her about the mess. So would her father. They enjoy when things go wrong for her because it proves again that they were right about her not being ready to leave their home. She is thirty-eight and would tell them so, but they would say age is not important. A person should never be on their own before they are ready for the responsibility. She closes the cupboard on their imaginary faces and looks over at the balloons. It is truly a joyful looking place. So colorful. She is glad she can do this for her friend. She is glad she had room in her day planner to be able to arrange everything. It is a truly happy day all the way around.