Britney's Mushroom (a short Story)

This one started as a very 2D concept driven story, but it was a bit robotic. I've since worked hard to flesh it out and serve the story rather than the idea.

I’m not used to standing in queues for book signings. Not because I cover unpopular releases, but rather because I only attend the most bumb-fuck backwoods stops on a given tour. Those stops are a nightmare for the author, stuck behind a foldout table in a cold room for the mandatory hour and a half on the off-chance that one of the three literate hicks in this town might feel like branching out from Hog and Duck magazine for a change. But hey, as long as the publicists keep booking these stops, I’ll keep taking advantage of the author’s undivided attention for said hour and a half.

The Only Choice was the first release to deny me this loophole.

In Loon Lake, Washington, the book signing sold out before I even had a chance to buy a ticket. I managed to get a face-to-face in Lindsay, Montana, but only for long enough to receive a quick scrawl in the inside cover of my copy and a courtesy smile from Macey Brown, the book’s sitcom-anointed author. Even in Buseko, Ontario-an ex-beaver pelt town of two thousand red faced citizens-- The Only Choice generated a line around the block.

On that cold Saturday morning, I could hardly believe my three-part connecting-flight journey over there had failed me. Standing out in the wind with coffee in one hand, Macey’s exposé in the other, I endured a pair of elderly couples and what smelt like the local tobacco dealer flaunting their spots in front of me with small talk on topics I think I’d need another decade in that place to understand. Along the crumbling sidewalk behind me, at least a dozen more of the most eclectic book enthusiasts I’d ever seen waited with equally vocal anticipation, paperbacks in hand, beards and eyebrows combed for the occasion. Of course, eight clangs from the town bell did not coincide with an opportunity to go inside as the opening hours sign had suggested it would. They did coincide with the first spatters of rain smearing the page of my open book though.

Naturally everyone ran for cover as that first spittle immediately evolved into a tractor-bucket flow. We all hid out under trees and narrow shopfront awnings until the bookstore owner finally turned up half an hour later. Some himming and haaing ensued as everyone tried to reconcile exactly what spot they’d previously held in the line, but the thing that really stood out to me during this transition is what happened in the park next door. I’m sure you’ve seen this before, but as quickly as the rain had cleared, an outcrop of bright red mushrooms popped out from the grass like something out of a cartoon. The only thing missing was a whistling flute as they jumped from the earth. Against the long green grass, those little fungi stems stood out like some magical gift from nature.

I distinctly remember sharing a smile with the three hundred-plus-pound man next to me as we marvelled from across the street like a pair of children. Even as the line shuffled forward, the two of us remained transfixed. This turned to disgust a moment later as a man in grey overalls- the type who I imagine plugs into a power point socket in some back room of the town hall every evening- wandered over to the outcrop and literally frowned at the mushrooms with hands on hips. He disappeared into the corrugated iron shed on the edge of the park and emerged with a push mower. God forbid if he didn’t remove that atrocity before any more good folks got the wrong idea about what type of park this was! I literally had to clasp my hand over my own mouth to stop myself from shouting at the bastard. Luckily my obesely-obese friend was ushered through the bookstore’s front door just as that mower released its first rev.

I know this seems trivial, but I think the thing that tickled my personal gripe nerve about this whole mushroom affair was the setting. If it hadn’t been in shit-hole Buseko, I might have swallowed it. It’s the exact type of nonsense I’d expect back home in Seattle—or for that matter, any big place with that self-maiming pre-occupation with “how our city’s perceived.” 

Yuck!

But Buseko? What goddamned tourist market are they catering to? How many people in this place could even spell perceived? I think that’s the part that just hit home for me. It’s never really about any end. It’s about order. Some people just can’t move on with their day if they notice something that doesn’t fit-

Right.

                 Between.

The.

                Lines.

After my flop in Montana, I decided not to take a book up to the counter for this one. Macey Brown had a way of making those two minutes in front of her table seem like a brush with a merciful goddess. She had this whole routine down where she’d take the book from you, look you in the eye, and smile. Regardless of what you said at that point, she’d glance down at the book like it was some old friend and delicately open the front cover. Once she’d scrawled her signature across the page, you might get a chance to ask one question. If you were unlucky, she’d skip the first step completely, batt her eyelids, and look around the room like she couldn’t believe where she was, negating both the book you’d handed her and any questions you’d prepared, but letting you feel like you’d witnessed a “rare” moment of genuine presence from the actress-turned-hero.

“Miss Brown,” I said, as those mascara-lined eyes searched my empty hands for her usual literary prop, “the tabloids have made much of the unique manner in which you discovered something was going on with your sister--”

“Oh, that’s such a funny story!” erupted Macey with an energy that caught me off guard. “See, for any stranger on the street, Brit would have looked like your standard twenty-something working professional.” Her eyes lit up with a performative charisma that wasn’t half as gripping as her producers no doubt assured her it was, “…the beautiful straight hair, the contoured makeup that looked like it was done by a specialist...” She swallowed. “But through a sister’s eyes?” She shook her head and spread her red nails across the table. “The second I saw that Forever Twenty-One skirt clinging to her hips, I knew something was seriously wrong.”

Macey pulled back. Her hazelnut eyes, wide as flashbulbs. “You know that store has been shut down for at least three years now? So, to see Britney Brown, my sister. The homecoming queen, wearing--”

“How close would you say you were to your sister during that period?”

Macey’s left eyelid--presumably the only un-botoxed section of her face--began to twitch, but I’d timed my question perfectly on her trailed off statement.

“I mean, we are sisters. There’s no closer bond.”

“¬But during that period specifically,” I pressed, “you say you saw her on the street--a chance encounter. How much time would you say had passed since the last time you two physically talked in person before that day?” 

I should have known this would be too much. In one of the empty bookstores that I’m used to operating in, Macey might have taken the bait just for its ego-padding value alone. But in Buseko? It was far too easy for her to gesture to the next person in line. Her puff sleeve rolled down to reveal a pharaoh’s share of bracelets as she slid a copy of her memoir my way and beckoned a woman with two long black chin hairs up to take my spot at the table.    

My brand-new copy of The Only Choice landed in the dumpster with the most fitting crunch I could have hoped for. It joined that pile of aluminium cans and used milk bottles as though it belonged there. Only after I’d lit a much-needed cigarette and felt the bookstore’s rough brick against my back, did I see the eyes watching me. Two vibrant hazel dinnerplates--more stunning than Macey’s even-- switching between me and something on the other side of the dumpster. I followed the gaze over to two separate bins, one stuffed with old phone books and shredded documents, another filled with a mixture of grass clippings and what had to be the mulched-up remains of my coveted mushrooms from earlier. I let my mouth hang in an are-you-kidding-me slouch as I realised what I was in for. Really? In Buseko fucking Ontario? In a back car park, no less?

“You too good to walk an extra three steps for the environment?” she asked in a New York drawl—not identical, but eerily similar to Macey’s candyfloss cadence. My heart took its best shot at running through my chest as this detail sank in. The straight hair, the makeup, the designer dress-suit, and, of course, the long ugly scar from the centre of her forehead, splitting her nose in two, breaching her upper lip, her lower lip, and stopping only at her chin.

I released my last drag and kept exhaling long after the smoke had left my lungs.

“I’m sorry” I said--referring to much more than the dumpster incident--as I extended the cigarette her way. She took my offering, and left me staring at my empty hand as though I’d grown an eleventh finger. I raised my eyes to a version of Britney Brown, Macey’s memoir had in no way primed me for-- “Britney Brown the Smoker.” Seeing her lips tighten around that white cylinder, watching its end flare up a deep orange, all invoked the what-have-you-just- committed-yourself-to sensation that first pressed its weight down on me last January, when I put ink to my final mortgage doc.  

“Long tour then?” I asked, taking a few steps towards the dumpster as if to undo my miscategorized recycling job, though making sure not to drop eye contact in case she thought I might be using the task as an excuse to avert my gaze from her scar. She slapped on a sad smile and raised her eyebrows.

“I’ve seen rougher days in recent years...”

Flashes of headlines and black and white images immediately hurled themselves at me. That little shack, the overhead shots of the fenced-off perimeter, the emaciated bodies being pulled out on stretchers, John Wendell’s haunting smile as he stood in the court docks.

“You must be so thankful for your sister for everything she’s done then?” I said, immediately giving up on my quest to retrieve the book and returning to her side.  

It’s funny how you react in situations like that. Literally fifteen minutes before, if you’d asked me what I thought of Macey Brown, the words that would have come to mind: media whore, opportunist, disingenuous bitch…. But in front of the one person who might have some real perspective on all those claims? I reverted right to the official line. The consensus opinion on America’s sitcom star-turned-hero.

Britney Brown laughed sadly--I’ll note right here, every emotion Britney shared had an air of sadness to it--and handed back the cigarette. “I’m definitely glad she stepped in--”

“But what?” I asked with a flustered quickness on hearing the unresolved lift at the end of that sentence.

She looked me right in the eye and crunched up her nose before turning back to the empty parking lot in front of us. She shrugged. “I dunno, sometimes--” Her eyes glazed over as a muddy four-wheeler rumbled around the corner and pulled up next to the bins. I clocked its driver as the park keeper from earlier-- “sometimes I get sad that that place doesn’t exist anymore.”

Another series of news clippings hit me hard. Men and women, all in business suits, lined up on their knees. No chains binding them as they extended some section of exposed flesh. Tongues, belly buttons, the flaps behind their ears. The man looming above them with scythe in hand. Nausea spread across my stomach.

Britney must have noticed my expression and held up two hands. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m fucking glad that bastard is behind bars….and I’m so grateful that the other guys and girls are free now….but there’s this one thing….this one part I don’t think anyone who hasn’t been through it will understand….”

The cigarette went out in my hand as I watched on. I didn’t even have to think about avoiding her scar anymore. All I could focus on were her eyes. Those sad, hypnotic eyes. 

“That place gave you permission to hold up a finger to society.” As she demonstrated the gesture directly at my face, it was hard not to feel in some way, targeted by it. “Wendell’s ranch let you throw out all ideas of what you, ‘ought’ to do, it let you dismantle every line between what you ‘should’ and ‘shouldn’t’ let happen to you.”

She dropped her eyes to my cigarette, appearing worn out by the statement.  “People hold my sister up as this hero,” she said. “…And for good reason. She noticed something was wrong and did something about it…”

“But…” I said for her.

She swallowed and met my eye. “But anyone who thinks she did all that for me….is crazy.”

I raised the cigarette to my lips and took a long drag of nothing. Crunching up my brow, I threw it away and shook my head. “You can’t really believe that? Say what you like about Macey Brown, but I’ve read the book. That woman took the smallest of hints and remained committed to that thread until she’d brought down John Wendell’s whole fucked up dream of a world. You don’t think there was even a touch of altruism there?”

“You’re missing the point…” said Britney, her tone hardening.

Sensing another Buseko, Ontario, failure, I made a conscious effort to soften my brow and raised my palms in the most diplomatic manner I knew how to affect. “Sorry, Miss Brown, please continue your point. Please help me understand.” 

She stared at me long and hard. The park-keeper had emptied three rubbish bags from his bike’s front tray by the time she decided it was safe to continue. “My sister didn’t stop for one second to consider why so many people would join a group like that in the first place. Her book didn’t devote a single sentence to the idea that, for all his faults, John Wendell created a place where people could experience things that didn’t exist anywhere else on this planet--” she swallowed a lump, “and there was something beautiful in that.”

Drifting into a world of her own, she raised her eyes to the sky. “I have my life back now. I’ve got a new job. I just got married; we’ve got extra money coming in from the book deal--” the scar on her nose twisted like a snake as she crunched it up-- “but at the same time, the ranch is gone now. I can never go back. Not even once. That hurts.”

I looked at her, stunned.

Clearly, she recognised the message failing to get through and tried again. “All my sister saw was a piece of litter that, by her standards—her damn immovable standards--made her perfect world a little bit uglier than it ought to be. So, she cleaned it up.” Britney shrugged. “Not for my sake, not for the other victim’s sake, but for the sake of her own elevated ego.” She drew her eyes to the dumpster where I’d thrown The Only Choice and cited a quote that had stared at me all the way from Loon Lake to Lindsay. “So much more than a Sit-Com starlit—The Guardian,” she said, each word dripping with sarcasm.  

Her long lashes interlocked into a squint and she tilted her head. “Does that make any sense to you?” She reached out a hand and issued those mud pool eyes on me. There it was again, that heavy sensation right in the centre of my chest. Getting myself into something I had no business tackling. Britney continued, “I know this is a hard thing to swallow, but is there anything in your ordinary life that can compare to this?”

I have to admit, that last line pissed me off a bit. “Ordinary Life?” What did she see exactly? The notepad in my front pocket, the two-day stubble I didn’t get a chance to shave clean on account of how late my flight got in this morning? Yep, she sure had me pegged. Some low-rung Journo. Just like all the others. Living off other people’s stories. Never a remarkable event in my own life. Cynical bitch. It was all painted right there in those trauma-damaged eyes.  

 As the four-wheeler revved into life and my parkkeeper set off for his next round of “civil-serving,” I felt a whole new level of compassion for Macey Brown. The shit she went through for a sister as ungrateful as this bitch? I shook my head and turned my back on her. “Sorry no there’s nothing in my ordinary life that compares to that. Because the shit that happened on that ranch was fucked up, you’re fucked up, and you need to go and see a professional!”

On my way back to the bookstore, I horse-kicked her precious bins into the alley wall. The top layer of red compost tipped across the ground. My sneakers squished the remains of those mushrooms into asphalt.

Sometimes when I think back to that morning, up in Buseko, I like to picture Britney Brown in the moments after I left. Getting on her knees one last time and scraping up all of those mushrooms with her hands. Wondering why she’s so misunderstood, hoping I’d suddenly turn around and rush to her side-- unloading a heartfelt apology, perhaps shedding a tear. “No, I could never relate to something as dramatic as what you went through, but I hear you Britney. Your pain is valid.” 

I didn’t look back though. See, there are some things in this life that simply aren’t worth understanding.