It’s Not Nice To Fool Mother Nature

Content advisory: contains talk about domestic violence.

Just that morning, someone in a 1970s Facebook group posted about the old Chiffon TV commercial where Dena Deitruck portrays Mother Nature. She’s out in the wild on a beautiful sunny day when she tastes something she thinks is butter, but it’s not. She deadpans to the camera her famous line, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature” and the beautiful day turns into a rip roaring storm.

As a teen, Sally loved that commercial. She loved it so much, that she dressed up like Mother Nature for Halloween one year. She watches a few times chuckling at the commercial, not realizing it’s a sign.

It was a beautiful sunny June day. Sally and Chip are meeting friends and their little girls at the swimming pool in their townhouse development.

Sally heads to the basement to find their beach towels and beach balls.

The first thing she finds is a pink pool noodle chucked into the corner that Chip had stomped on a few weeks earlier when he found out that she wore her new lime green bikini to the pool’s opening day events. Under it was the beach ball he stabbed with a screw driver a few days ago when she wasn't home on time from work when he wanted to go the pool.

She shoves them both into a black trash bag and drops the bag in the can out back.

The next box she opens is filled with the dishes Chip broke the past few months. Most of the breaks were not by accident. She ponders making mosaics out of them. After staring into the box for a few seconds, she closes it and shoves the box to the back of the piles of junk strewn around the basement.

She goes into the laundry room looking for the beach towels. On the floor, she sees the blood soaked hand towel from two nights ago still sitting in the bucket of bleach water next to the washer.

Chip wasn’t home yet, so the sound of the machine filling and cycling through its phases can’t disturb his incessant need for quiet when he is in one of his “deep thinking moments.”

Back on the hunt for the beach balls and towels, she trips over a small box holding letters from her old friends. Earlier in the year, Chip tore up all the letters from her childhood boyfriend. The next day, after he left for work, Sally boxed up the shreds hoping to tape them back together.  She closes the box and hides it under a pile of her laundry knowing Chip wouldn't find it there.

Finally, she finds the good beach balls and towels behind a pile of broken chairs in the closet, and takes them upstairs.

When Chip walks in the door a 40 minutes later, she is relieved to see he's in a good mood, whistling some tune she didn't recognize as he saunters up the steps to get ready to meet their friends.

“You look good in that bathing suit,” he says smugly. She is wearing her old, frumpy black one- piece with a skirt. She looks at herself in the powder room mirror and sighs. She contorts herself and checks the backs her upper arms in the mirror, pulls out a bottle of coverup out of the drawer, and lightly touches up the pale yellow marks on the back of her right shoulder. She walks back into the living room and pulls on her cover up just in case someone looks at her up close.

Chip ogles the bathing beauties sunning themselves on the beach chairs outside the pool club house. One bikini clad blonde notices and smiles at him. He winks and gives her a thumbs up.

Sally sees their friends, Jane, Reg and the girls at the opposite corner of the pool deck and lugs their bag of towels, beach ball, and Chip’s snacks and beer and heaves the bag onto an open chaise lounge next to Jane.

After a few minutes of small talk, the girls, Reg, and Chip jump into the pool to play Marco Polo when Sally notices a pile of leaves outside of the fence start swirling around, forming a tiny funnel before they settle back to the grass gently.  

Dumbfounded, she stares at the leaves and the next thing she knows the funnel recreates itself, double in size and starts picking up more leaves and soda cans littering It reminds her of the cartoon Tasmanian Devil, spinning out of control.

Her eyes blur for a second as they adjust to the almost instant change from bright sun to dark gray as an ominous black cloud rushes over the sun. More clouds follow and the air quickly cools.

Sally yells over to Chip, and points to the leaves, cans, and then up to the sky.

Chip ignores her, but Reg’s head whips around, he grabs both his girls, hoists them up on the concrete deck, and he and Jane rush them to the club house.  

The bathing beauties look up, look at each other and shrug, slowly pull up their bags and towels and saunter into the club house looking back only to make sure they had all their stuff.

Sally stands and watches as her beach ball, which had been leisurely floating around in the deep end of the pool, soars at least 50 feet above her. It’s rainbow colors are spinning wildly against the dark gray sky. Huge raindrops start falling, hitting her face like stinging ping pong balls.

She yells at Chip again and he ignores her. She starts heading for the club house when he shouts at her that she is a dumb ass for leaving. No one but Sally is around to hear him.

Just as Sally gets to the club house doorway, she hears a loud thud and sees the chaise lounge she had her bags on landing in a crumpled heap next to the beach ball on the other side of the fence. Chip, still in the pool, was paddling around on his back like nothing was happening.

Within five minutes, the sun was back out. The blonde bathing beauties babble among themselves and curse as they dust leaves off their chaise lounges. Reg and Jane bring the kids back out and Jane looks at Chip still in the pool, then looks at Sally and shakes her head.

Sally hugs Jane and says she will call her soon. Chip doesn't notice her leave as he was focusing on one of the bathing beauties standing at the edge of the diving board, attempting a perfect swan dive.

Once in the front door of the townhouse, Sally heads to the basement, fishes her box of letters out of the laundry pile and pulls the ruined beach ball out of the trash bag outside. She runs back up the steps and grabs her heavy travel bag that she had hidden months ago behind her winter coats. She finds a piece of paper and pen and scribbles “Mother Nature has spoken and you are a fool.” She tapes the note to the beach ball and slams the door behind her.

Sally maneuvers her car out of the heavily the shadowed parking space, turns up the music, and heads toward highway. The numbers on the on ramp sign glitter like diamonds in the sun and the shadow-less highway stretches out in front of her.