Page 64 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland
And even now, the numbers probably still held. Numbers were never at fault. Grant had changed, that was all. No, wait,hehadn’t changed—she’d simply failed to notice that Dulcina had claimed a higher numerical ranking than Beatrice had. And that, had she known it, would have earned a big fat ten in the cons, which would have put her final total at 101 pro, 107 con. With that result, shewouldn’thave married him.
So. Could a spreadsheet help manage mortal doom?
There was only one way to find out.
Beatrice took a too-large sip of her tea and typed,Life Expectancy Checklist.
In the first column, she typed,How many years left?
In the second column, she typed,Things to do with this time.
Out the window, a sailboat chugged past under motor power, and her bed rocked slowly in the light wake. The tea in her cup moved gently in the same rhythm.
Okay, it was always better to start with the focus dialed all the way out. Zoom out and up, then look down from a bird’s-eyeview. She was forty-five. Her doctor had said she was healthy. Did that mean she could live to a hundred? Not very likely, but if she didn’t factor in the prediction, it wasn’t totally impossible.
UnderHow many years left?she typed,If I have 55 years left.
To the right of that, she started her list, each item getting its own vertically centered, left-justified text box.
Travel to every continent, including Antarctica.
Learn to draw.
Be able to play two instruments well and one badly but with enthusiasm [guitar, ukulele, and accordion?].
Have a strong community around me that I love, a community that loves me for who I am.
A whole community? How did someone get that? How was it made?
In school, it came built in, she supposed, though she never saw the people she went to high school or college with anymore. Presumably it happened at the workplace, but for her whole career, she’d been employed by Barnard Family Finance in their two-person office. Other than Dad, she’d never had workmates with whom to gather around a watercooler. She’d never been tasked with bringing a carrot cake for a coworker’s birthday. True, she’d always enjoyed that she didn’t have to deal with annoying associates she couldn’t escape. But maybe bringing donuts and huddling in a break room had a greater purpose?
It had been easier when she and Iris had been together. Iris couldn’t walk into a café without running into a best friend or ex-lover, and she couldn’t walk out without making a new pal destined to become another bestie. She and her buddies had included Beatrice in the things they did. Then Grant and his group had done the same. Beatrice was forty-five, and had never had to build her own circle of friends.
Idly, Beatrice typed into an empty box,Dulcina, go fuck yourself.
Delete, delete, delete.
Building her own community would probably take fifty-five years. At least.
Next up:If I have 25 years left.
She’d be seventy when she died—okay, that was creeping into the age range she’d consider actually old. When she’d been twenty, seventy wasn’t old, it wasancient. (And forty-five was old then.)
To the right, she slipped new goals into their tidy text boxes:
Visit beautiful places I’ve never been.Sublist:Venice, Paris, New Orleans, Rio de Janeiro, Istanbul, San Miguel de Allende.
Read one book a week for pleasure, not for learning.
Take a pottery class.
Make one new friend a year.
Beatrice sighed and pushed her feet more firmly under her new down comforter. The duvet cover was dark purple with bright red poppies. Grant would have hated it, but that’s not why she’d bought it. She’d bought it because she loved it.
She typed:If I have ten years left.
If she died in ten years, she’d be fifty-five.
