Edwina of Liberty

Match Ryan

Edwina planned a birthday party.  She was turning 38.  She wasn’t supposed to make it this far.  She had read the studies.  She knew the truth about Edwinas.  She knew what was up.

Here’s what the studies said:  The life expectancy for a person named Edwina is 37.  The life expectancy for all other females is 77.

She invited all of the Edwinas from here, there, and every Edwinaville to her party.  They could bring their spouses or friends or pets.  She had an announcement to make. 

And when the party finally started, she mingled, letting the other Edwinas know that she, not them, was the “Edwina of Honor.”  “Yes, I am that Edwina,” she’d say and swirl her soft hair around her fingers.

She drank beer from a little cup, and when it emptied, she found a slightly bigger cup and drank from it.  And when that was finished, she drank beer from an even slightly bigger cup.  This pattern repeated itself until she got all the way up to a medium-sized cup.

One of the other Edwinas noticed the progression.  “Is that an average size cup that you are now drinking from?”

“I’m glad you noticed.  It’s a metaphor for something.”  Edwina dropped the cup, splashing beer on the interrogator and clapped her hands above her head.  Her assistant brought out a huge mug of beer that said “Edwina” on the side.  Edwina drank from it till the beer foxtrotted to her brain.

At this point, she made an exchange with her assistant, trading the mug for a Roman candle, before climbing atop a picnic table.  “I’m going to make an important announcement, but first, I need six actors to assist me.”

She waited for the six volunteers to join her on the table.  “I need three of you to juggle these apples, one of you to smoke this joint and two of you to have vaginal intercourse.”

She waited for the actors to get into it:  the jugglers caught on and weren’t dropping any fruit, the dope smoker was high, and the sexers were moaning.  The mood was just right.

“Here you have it, Edwinas.  It has been known for a while that you will probably die by the age of 37.  Don’t expect the non-Edwinas to care. They won’t.  They will continue to name the ugliest and dumbest of their children, “Edwina.”  But here’s the good news:  I also read another study, done by some really smart people.  They said I will live to be 469 years old.  I will single-handedly raise your life expectancy.  Please consider me the patron saint of all Edwinas.  So for tonight, we will juggle, smoke weed, and have sex.”

Edwina danced on the table, while the crowd of Edwinas cheered her on.  As soon as she lit her Roman candle, her heel got stuck in the slat of the table, but she did not fall and break her neck.  She was safe from danger.  According to the study she’d read and believed, she would live for another 431 years.

Edwina held the Roman candle above her head at a slight angle.  Balls of fire shot through the air announcing the emancipation of all Edwinas.  She felt, and the partygoers agreed with her, that she was a goddess, standing beneath a volcano and squeezing blasts of lava from its crater.

Match Ryan’s fiction has been published or is forthcoming in Word Riot, elimae, Pequin, Clockwise Cat, Bewildering Stories, Boston Literary Magazine and Writers Notes.  He is an editor for Best New Writing and a professor of English at Concordia University St. Paul.  He holds the MFA in Writing from Spalding University.