The Lunch Lady: Final Part
Friday Fix
Read Part I, II, III, and IV here.
“You used to call me the Lunch Lady. Do you remember that?”
From where they sit at her bedside, Tyson and Rachel exchange a quiet look, both of them bemused and perhaps a little chagrined.
“Yeah, Miss Marrow. I remember,” Tyson finally admits. “But that was just a name that stuck. We were dumb kids. We never meant it as a — as an insult or anything. It’s just that we only ever saw you at lunchtime.”
Wincing, the Lunch Lady shifts in place, disturbing her sterile hospital bedsheets.
“It’s okay, Tyson,” she tells him. “As it happens, I sometimes refer to myself as Lunch Lady… but only ever in my head…”
With that, the Lunch Lady trails off; her chapped, cracked lips working in silence.
“Miss Marrow?” Rachel says, a little sharply. “Miss Marrow, you were about to tell us what happened last night.”
The Lunch Lady's gaze regains some of its earlier focus as she takes us in, all three of us gathered around her bed.
“Oh yes,” she says distantly. “I remember now. I was telling you what happened.”
“The doctors said...” Tyson’s voice wobbles. He clears his throat. “The doctors were saying that you’d... that you ate...”
Rachel takes his trembling hand. “Poison,” she finishes bluntly. “They told us you ingested rat poison. We just want to know… how that happened.”
It was me, I think. I poisoned the Lunch Lady. And Lord knows, she had it coming.
“I had it coming,” the Lunch Lady says softly.
Tyson and Rachel exchange alarmed looks.
“Does this have anything to do with that woman last month? Back at the grocery store?” Tyson asks her. “We know she was supposed to be here, with you. You mentioned her in your sleep, and the doctors said she was your emergency contact. Your next of kin.”
“She shouldn’t be,” the Lunch Lady says firmly. “And I’m glad she’s not here. I don’t deserve to have Kelly Harrison with me, not even on my deathbed.”
I feel a sudden surge of hatred and indignation toward the Lunch Lady, solely on the basis of her saying that name aloud. And if I’m able to contain these emotions, it’s only by reminding myself that the Lunch Lady is already on her way out.
Thank God, this awful woman only has minutes of life left in her.
“Who is Kelly to you, Miss Marrow?” Tyson says quietly.
“Please don’t call me that. Call me Maggie,” the Lunch Lady replies. “Allergies. Do you have any allergies, Tyson?”
“Allergies? Me? No,” Tyson says, clearly thrown by this sudden change of topic. Then he frowns. “I remember you asking me that once. Last year. Right before you...”
“Before I lost my mind?” The Lunch Lady smiles a little. “I know I scared you, Tyson. I’m sorry for that. Please understand, when you first took a sip of my lemonade punch... I saw something.”
“What?” Tyson asks. “What did you see?”
“Murder,” the Lunch Lady breathes. “I saw a boy I killed. Not just that, I saw me killing him.
“I saw Kelly’s son.”
Rachel gasps. Tyson simply looks bewildered.
“I once knew a boy with allergies. Severe ones,” the Lunch Lady forges on. “He was allergic to eggs. Can you believe that? Eggs. Oh, nuts I could understand. Shellfish, too. Those are allergies everyone’s heard of. But being allergic to eggs?”
“You were warned,” I say softly, walking over to the other side of the bed. “Mom was always telling you to be careful.”
“Kelly Harrison was always telling me to be careful around him,” the Lunch Lady says, her eyes following me even as I close in on her. “Lord knows, she knew I could be stubborn. Set in my ways. But I... I...”
Here, the Lunch Lady’s voice trembles so badly, it’s a miracle she’s able to regain control of it.
“I made a mistake,” she says at last. “I never used eggs in his banana bread. I promise you, I didn’t. I used substitutes. Yogurt. Applesauce. But the spatula I ended up using... I don’t think I washed it off properly... I never took it seriously enough...”
When the Lunch Lady’s body is wracked with huge, heaving shudders, Rachel reaches over to take her withered, varicose-laden hand — a gesture that the Lunch Lady does not deserve. Tyson, however, does not move, but simply wears a look of dawning comprehension on his face.
“Art,” he whispers. “In your kitchen, you shouted that name when I drank the punch. And back then, you also mentioned that you liked to read fantasy books with your daughter. So, then, your daughter was...”
“The boy’s mother,” the Lunch Lady says, a touch sharply. “Kelly Harrison was only ever Art’s mother. She is not my daughter. She’ll never be my daughter again.”
And it’s odd: a long-held tension in the Lunch Lady releases in this moment; a welcome, palliative abatement of her constant suffering.
Stranger still is that the hate I’ve harboured for her also begins to melt away, only now that she’s said the unsayable thing. And in place of that contempt, I feel more tired than ever.
This is how I know the time is near.
It’s as I reach out to the Lunch Lady, my fingers finding their way to her throat, that she broaches her most shameful secret of all.
“The thing is, Tyson... Art is always with me,” the Lunch Lady whispers. “Sometimes I like to think he’s a ghost haunting me, only he isn’t. He isn’t that at all.”
“What is he, then?” Rachel asks softly.
The Lunch Lady’s eyes bore into mine.
“He’s me.”
“I don’t understand,” Tyson says.
“It hurts to be me,” the Lunch Lady whimpers. “Sometimes, I need a way out. When it all gets to be too much for me to bear. So, I pretend to be someone else. I pretend to be him. Art Harrison.”
“Your grandson,” Rachel says softly.
The Lunch Lady pulls her hand out of Rachel’s grip. As she does so, she shakes her head emphatically. “No. He’s Kelly’s son. And it hurts to be him, but it’s easier to be him than to be me.”
The Lunch Lady then takes a breath. “Sometimes, I’d envision him playing with children his own age, like in a school playground or a park. He was twelve when he died… so I usually find him in those sorts of places. I’d clutch the fence as I stared at those children — at you children — and I’d pretend I was Art playing amongst you.
“Then, when I’d visit you in your classroom as your lunch time supervisor, a part of me would become Art. I would be Art, sitting with you all, laughing and joking and sometimes even reading. Like his mother — and like me — Art loved fantasy books. He especially loved stories about his namesake, King Arthur…”
“Miss Marrow… Maggie…” Tyson says slowly. “I don’t know… I don’t know what you want me to—”
“There’s so much I want to say to him,” the Lunch Lady murmurs, her breathing growing ever more shallow as my hand rests on her throat. “Art hates me. He’s always wanted to kill me. It was him who put that rat poison in my lunch yesterday, just as I put my poison into his lunch all those years ago.
“And after Art died, I never used to allow him inside my kitchen. I mean, I never imagined myself as him inside that awful room, because I knew he would kill me. And letting him kill me seemed too easy — like I was escaping my rightful punishment. It wasn’t until I saw Kelly Harrison again those weeks ago that I realized...”
“…it was time to go,” Rachel finishes, her tears falling thick and fast.
The Lunch Lady nods. And for some reason, she begins flexing her right hand, repeatedly opening and closing it.
“After I encountered Kelly Harrison in the grocery store, Art wanted to get it over with immediately. But not before your birthday, Tyson,” the Lunch Lady adds. “Not before your sixteenth birthday. So, Art waited until last night. And now he’s back. He’s right here at my bedside, opposite the two of you. He’s ready to kill me. I feel his hand around my windpipe.”
When the Lunch Lady points at me, Tyson and Rachel both glance upward, staring right through me, neither of them seeing anything but the wall opposite. Even as they do, the ECG monitor to the Lunch Lady’s right grows steadily more erratic.
Rachel stands up and runs out of the room, presumably to find a doctor, or perhaps merely to distance herself from the dying wreck of a human being that is the Lunch Lady. Tyson, however, can’t seem to tear his eyes away from the crone — who does not look at him, but instead gazes steadily up at me.
“What do you need?” I hear Tyson murmur, somewhere in the distance. “What can I do?”
“I looked for him in you, Tyson,” the Lunch Lady continues weakly. “I… I used to imagine you as my best friend. When I was him, I mean. I know it doesn’t make any sense. But it really does hurt to be me. It hurts to be me, living in my skin, and it’s so much easier to watch myself through Art’s eyes. I hate me and Art hates me, and since you always used to laugh at me... I liked to imagine that you and Art were friends.
“And every night… I would pray that Art would… that he would somehow find it in himself to… to…”
Tyson figures it out. Just as he does, something inside me relents.
“I forgive you,” we both say.
Tyson takes her hand, even as I close my own around her throat.
And together, we both squeeze.
THE END
Thank you for reading this five-part series!
This will most likely be the last Friday Fix for a little while — and it was a pleasure having you read this story!
So the killer is a ghost. And also the Lunch Lady. Hehe. This one kept twisting but it makes sense to me. I definitely didn't see this ending coming. Now the Lunch Lady can rest in peace. It's a sweet end in its own way. Nice work, Asterion.