Free True To Form by Elizabeth Berg

fade.”
    â€œI guess,” I say. And then, “Do you think you should tell your wife before I go in there so she isn’t too shocked?” I see her clutching her chest, her eyes bugging out, “Henry?????”
    â€œI think she’ll be just fine,” he says, and he’s right. When we walk into Mrs. Randolph’s room, she’s sitting up in the wheelchair beside her bed. When she sees me, at first she holds really still, and we just stare at each other. In my head, there’s a little voice counting, “One . . . two . . . ” And then Mrs. Randolph slaps her knee and starts laughing so hard nothing comes out but wheezing. And I start laughing too. And I know at this moment that Cynthia isn’t my only friend.
    â€œQT?” she asks.
    I nod. “I used a little too much.”
    â€œI’ve seen the ads for it,” she said. “I thought that’s what would happen!”
    â€œWell, I wish you’d told me first,” I say.
    â€œWhat’s that?” she says, and I repeat myself louder.
    â€œIt won’t last,” she says, kind. And then we laugh out the last little bit of our dismay.

T HIS IS THE KIND OF sunset that makes you believe in God. I’m sitting out in the backyard looking at a sky so full of pale pink and lavender I feel like crying. I have Bones, the big skinny mutt, on one side of me and Bridgett, the almost-cocker spaniel, on the other, and even they seem affected, lying so quietly with serious looks on their dog faces.
    I wonder sometimes if dogs think about humans, about how we act. I wonder if they see us getting dressed and think, Hmmm, now why in the world are they doing that? I wonder if they see us get into cars and think, Why don’t they just run there? I’ll bet they think we’re crazy for not spending a lot more time outdoors.
    I’m out here to try to cool off after taking a boiling hot shower. My father’s idea. When he saw my QT glow, he didn’t know what to do. Ginger, laughing, told him that it happened all the time, that she in fact had once turned herself orange, and that seemed to help him from getting mad. He pulled me over to the sink and rubbed my arm with some dish soap and water: nothing. Then cleanser. Nothing. Then he told me to go take a long, hot shower. And that did seem to help some, but basically I guess time will have to do the trick. I wish I could arrest whoever made QT. It is a pure lie. But all I can do is write a letter to the company to at least try to get my money back; that was Ginger’s idea. She said she wished she had thought of it when it happened to her. I said I could ask for two-for-one,but she said never mind, she would just cosign my letter about myself.
    I lie back and Bridgett rests her nose on my stomach, like she feels sorry for me. Say what you want about dogs, I think they’re smarter than humans. You don’t see them walking around turned orange from trying to be tan. If they did get tan, they wouldn’t think it was a big deal anyway; they’d just be interested to know when the next meal was coming or the next rabbit running by. Bones caught a rabbit once and killed him. I hate those things where it’s just nature but it hurts your feelings so bad. A lot of things in life are like that. In fact, you could say life is like that.
    I take in a huge breath and look at the sky as hard as I can. I feel like I’m trying to eat it with my eyes. I wish there would be certain things you come across and you could say, Okay, that’s one. Put that away for me to pull out later just exactly as it is now. My dream is for me to be a poet who could make things like this sky come to life for someone else. If you see a sunset and try and describe it to someone in normal words, all you can say is, “Boy, I saw a great sunset last night.” But if you are a poet, you give it to someone to feel for themselves. Like you