Week 10, Theme 5

Prompt: Choose a subject--like Auster's Petit--who seems to you daring in an unusual and admirable way, and explain why. Pay attention to what sorts of technique, including constraints and tools, are involved in your subject's daring If you see an analogy to the work of writing, explain or imply it, perhaps as your prose embodies it.

Beverly Lacey has a job, a steady boyfriend, and just moved into new digs right on the waterfront. She has a glass, or four, of brandy every Friday and hasn’t missed a Sunday service at St. John’s in as long as anyone can remember. Every three years, she buys a new, top-of-the-line Lincoln, and spends the next thirty six months lead-footedly, joyously violating the speed limits on the empty highways of Buffalo. The sales clerks at Nordstrom all know her by name, and present to her with grimly embarrassed faces when she arrives and they have not yet received the newest pantsuit in her preferred size, 00.

Weekday mornings at 3:30am, Bev wakes up, showers, applies makeup, tidies, and then sits down to plain oatmeal and black coffee to take in the morning news. She’s speeding away from downtown in the Lincoln by 5:30, off to the suburban headquarters of People, Incorporated. She’s always the first one there, and spends an hour opening up shop and tidying her desk. By 8, when the “kids” come in, she’s ready to administer morning medications. A daycare center for violent, developmentally disabled adults, People, Inc. does the tough job of caring for people who just can’t fit into daily life. The work is difficult and sometimes dangerous, and has scared more than one nurse away during Bev’s tenure. Beverly likes the challenge.

By four, Bev is back at home, pumping away on her exercise bike while keeping up with the “silly” goings on at General Hospital. Usually, Frank will come over to join her for dinner. He’s asked Bev to marry him four times, but each time she has politely declined. One marriage was enough – Beverly likes her freedom.

I’ve got to say it: for 82, my grandma is a badass.