Mr. Maple's Good Life

Mr. Maple's Good Life(Martin Green) Mr. Maple’s Good Life (Approx 750 wds)

Mr. Maple got home from his morning round of golf about noon. “Mail’s on the table,” his wife Ruth called from the bedroom. He looked through it. A couple of bills, some ads, a few travel agency brochures, the daily low-interest credit card offer, something from the alumni association of his college. He opened this last one, thinking that if we really wanted to track down Osama Bin Laden we’d ask his college’s alumni association. They always found you, no matter what.

He expected another plea for a donation, although he’d sent something in just a few months ago. No, it was his class’s 40th anniversary and they were planning a big reunion. Could it have been 40 years already? It didn’t seem possible. There was also a kind of survey form: where was he living, how many children, where had he worked, what was he doing now, and a blank space for his reflections on his life since graduating. His reflections? He shook his head, smiling. He wasn’t a reflective kind of person.

He went into the bedroom, where Ruth was folding clothes, and told her about the 40th reunion. “Want to go back East?” he asked.

“Not really,” she said. “Flying is such a hassle now. It’s bad enough when we have to visit the children. Do you?”

They’d moved to a retirement community in California a few years ago. No more snow in the winter and humidity in the summer. “I’ve pretty well lost touch with anybody in my class,” he said. “There wouldn’t be too much point to it. I guess I’ll fill out their form and tell them we can’t make it.”

That afternoon they went over to their neighbors to play bridge. They agreed to go out to dinner together. Afterward, they watched a little television, and at ten they went to bed. This was the routine of their days: golf, bridge, eating out, television.

The next morning Mr. Maple filled out the college’s survey form. He’d worked in an ad agency for a couple of years, then over 30 years in the public relations department of a manufacturing company. They’d had two children, a son and a daughter, the son married with two children (their grandkids) the daughter divorced. He stared at the “reflections” space for a while, then decided he’d fill it in later.

After lunch, Ruth went off to a meeting of one of the clubs she belonged to and he settled in to read a book. He liked history. But he couldn’t concentrate. His thoughts darted every which way, like fish disturbed in an aquarium. His life. Their first cramped little apartment in New York when he worked at the ad agency, expecting great things. Then being out of work when the agency’s biggest client had left and it had folded. He’d been scared, very scared. When he’d been offered the public relations job through a college friend, he’d grabbed it. And stayed there even though he hated it. But there had been the two kids so he had no choice. Or that’s what he’d told himself.

Then there’d been their son’s hippie phase, the long hair, dropping out of college, the suspected drug-taking. After that had finally passed, their daughter had divorced and returned home with her year-old child. It had taken years before she’d gotten back on her feet, years of loaning her money (never paid back), of worrying about the latest unsavory boy friend.

More recently, there’d been Ruth’s finding a lump on her breast, the worry and fear, the surgery and the chemotherapy. Luckily, she now seemed okay, but who knew when the doctors would find something else. And his own health. He’d been going to the bathroom more and more frequently. Was it prostate cancer, something which half the men he knew seemed to have? Mr. Maple abruptly stood up. What was the matter with him? He never gave way to such thoughts. It was that damned survey. He put his golf clubs in the trunk of his car and drove to the driving range.

When he got back home, Ruth was there. “How was your meeting?” he asked.

“Oh, the usual. We decided to have a picnic next month. What about you?”

“Went to hit some golf balls.” After taking a shower, he sat at his desk and finished filling out the survey form. “I was fortunate to work many years for the same company,” he wrote, “and so have a good retirement. We have two children who live back East. We try to visit them once a year.. We enjoy the California weather, playing golf and bridge. It’s been a good life.”
The End