THE TURQUOISE PEN

MARY ANN'S SECRET

Noël R. King

Mary Ann had a secret.

At first she was not going to tell anybody, but then she saw how impossible that was going to be. She would have had to tape her mouth shut practically, she realized, in order not to tell her secret. And being a practical person, she decided instead just to tell it.

But that sounded a lot easier than it actually turned out to be.

Because Mary Ann’s secret was very strange. It’s like self-stick stamps. Something that seems so self-evident once you know about it but before then is completely out of the realm of awareness. That is what Mary Ann’s secret was like.

But first I’ll tell you what happened after she discovered her secret. Mary Ann had always been a very bitter woman. She tried not to be, but she really felt like she couldn’t help it.

"I am a bitter, bitter woman," in fact is what she said to herself on her forty-forth birthday last year. "And I do not know what to do about it. I have tried all I know to try to become sweet and lovely, but I simply do not have this capability. I shall probably die a bitter, bitter woman."

She felt all shriveled up inside, like a prune or even a carrot that’s been left out in the sunshine for two or three days. Or what you feel inside your mouth when somebody says the word "dessicated." Your tongue starts to shrivel up, doesn’t it? Well, this is what Mary Ann had felt like more and more each year since about the age of six, sadly enough.

She tried drinking more water, even though she knew that was silly. But when you are desperate you will try almost anything. And Mary Ann was also one of the most desperate people she knew, which was an unusual combination. Most bitter, shriveled up people do not have enough left inside them to feel desperation, but Mary Ann was one of the lucky ones, as we shall see.

So one day Mary Ann was sitting on the bus, staring out the tinted green window. It was a very sunny day, and she supposed she was probably supposed to feel happy about this, but instead it just made her feel even more shriveled and dried-up inside. She reached in her large black purse to see if she could find an old piece of gum somewhere. Anything at all to add some moisture back into her life. Nope, no gum.

So she went back to looking out the window. When the bus turned the corner, the sun hit her face from the bit of window that was only faintly tinted and it made her blink rapidly a couple of times.

That’s when Mary Ann’s life changed.

"I blink; therefore I am" is the only way she would explain it for a very long time afterward even when I asked her repeatedly to tell me what she meant. How could blinking get you anywhere in life other than to keep your eyeballs nice and moist? I just didn’t get it. But it was obvious Mary Ann’s life was changing in dramatic ways, and I could see no outer reason for it at all. None at all.

Every time I sat with her, starting just a few days after her encounter with herself on the bus, I intently watched Mary Ann’s blinking eyes, trying to understand her secret. Blink. Blink. Blink. The only thing I could see was a small Mona Lisa smile whenever Mary Ann blinked. And sometimes she would breathe deeply and then smile more broadly. But this set of facts did not help me at all. It just made me more intensely curious. In fact, now I was the one feeling desperate.

Oh yes. I forgot to tell you that Mary Ann untwisted into the sweetest, nicest woman around. She would tell anyone who wanted to hear it how wonderful and full of sweetness her life had become.

"Just like a fresh piece of juicy, yummy Bubble Yum," I heard her repeat on more than one occasion. "I am just one sweet sugar moment after the next—and all without tooth decay, too!" Then she would chuckle and even sometimes chortle and blink some more.

The more I saw Mary Ann’s life fill up with sweetness the more bitter mine began to taste. Now I was the one pawing in my pockets and kitchen drawers for old pieces of gum and constantly chugging on a liter of water, trying to unshrivel my life from the inside out.

I begged and begged Mary Ann to be more specific with me, to tell me exactly what changed her life. Looking back, I think she made me beg for so long because she wanted to be darn sure I wasn’t just asking out of curiosity. She was not going to give away her secret only for somebody like me to laugh it into the ground and grind it away. Apparently she had learned the hard way those first few days, even if she was now sweet and all.

So finally Mary Ann told me that if I swore that I would tell nobody else without first consulting with her and that I would just drop it and never mention it again after she told me, she would tell me.

I swore. I swore on a million Bibles—or at least that’s what I told Mary Ann.

And she told me.

I still don’t get it, though. But do you want me to tell you anyway? I mean, because I could just pack up my pen and walk away now without ever mentioning it again. Do you really care what she told me?

Yes. No.

If you chose yes, please continue. If you chose no, thank you for your honesty.

If you are reading this far, apparently you want to be, so I’ll let you be the judge of that.

Well, then, here’s Mary Ann’s wacko story.

"I blink, I receive. I blink, I believe. I blink, I retrieve it all back to me." When I just blinked at her after she told me this, she sighed—but sweetly—and tried again.

"Every time I blink, I fold all I see around me back into myself. Don’t you see? Blinking says I see you, I believe you, I accept you to the Universe. There—that’s all I’m going to say about it. Care for another glass of lemonade?"

I said yes because I was parched, and I asked for extra, extra sugar. Then I blinked all the way home and got a headache from all that blinking. I didn’t want to tell you this earlier, but I still don’t know what she was talking about.

—As circumstances warrant, through her Turquoise Pen column Noël R. King reports from Reston, Virginia, on some very strange and wonderful things, including the power (or not) of blinking.