A NORMAL ENOUGH DAY AT EIGHTY-FOUR

She is sitting around thinking about nothing when out of nowhere she wonders how porcupines have sex. She looks it up. The first thing she learns is that female porcupines are fertile and want to have sex only several hours a year and they make it known by wailing. Several hours a year? Wow, that’s not a lotta sex. How marvelously simple, she thinks to herself. A lot of wailing! Then comes the video.

She watches the male’s cautious approach, notes how carefully he positions himself to achieve what she thinks of as a medically accurate entry, and immediately, he begins thrusting. This comes as a surprise. Almost a shock, it is so sudden. Of course, she thinks, there was always the thrusting. She continues to watch. She does not sigh or whisper, “Oh, yes.” These are porcupines for heaven’s sake.

After what seems like no more than a minute, the female must be satisfied with his load, because she detaches herself without difficulty and takes off, the male in hot pursuit. How that turns out, she doesn’t know, because the video is over. She congratulates herself on using the word “load.” She was young once. She knew her way around. Hell, yes.

She lights a cigarette. Holy shit, she whispers. The porcupines turned me on.

Then she wonders how baby porcupines nurse, but forgets to look that up, because the video in line after porcupine sex is already beginning and it is a rerun of John Travolta’s most popular dance moves. This occupies her for quite a while. Later, looking back on her day, one thing has led to another in the normal way. She even made a few notes for a story.

So she makes the raw corn- black bean- avocado- lime juice and crushed corn -chips salad and while eating it, her friend Paul makes her laugh and she inhales a kernel of corn. She then disappears into a fit of terrible coughing and Paul gives her the Heimlich Maneuver, and thumps her back, all to no end. He has looked up aspirating a kernel of corn and wants her to let him call 911. She nods her head, unable to speak properly, and winds up in the ER.

But she is not turning blue, she can still breathe, and after several hours of coughing on a gurney in the hall of the busy E.R., she is allowed to go home. Keep yourself alert, she is told, you could develop pneumonia, and something else horrible she immediately forgets. Her exhausted daughter picks her up after work, makes sure she is all right and then goes home to her children.

Usually she stays up late, but coughing takes a lot out of you, she thinks, and goes directly to bed. It is seven-thirty. Ten minutes later, she coughs again and out pops a smooth, rather pale kernel of corn. Right onto her pillow. What a relief! No pneumonia, no more the other thing. She wants to put it in a locket and wear it around her neck.

Months ago she began to draw. She can’t draw, which means she doesn’t feel obliged to get better at it. She draws to please herself. It’s like being eight years old with a big box of crayons and lots of paper. Sky goes on the top and trees go on the bottom.

She wants to make porcupines! Those marvelous quills, so long and curving, spiky and graceful, how would she be able to stop? She couldn’t! She would have to fill the whole page with porcupines! Little ones, big ones, porcupines everywhere! Only she doesn’t know what a porcupine’s face looks like. The video was filmed from behind.

She decides to draw a kernel of corn. Tomorrow. Or maybe a great big cob.