One would have thought that turning seventy could slow Evelyn Jacoby down. One would have thought wrong. Tragically so. For it was to everyone’s detriment—everyone who still bothered to stay in Evelyn’s orbit, that is—to assume that she could ever be slowed down. Not even by her own body, which, although crying out for respite every time she took on another innocuous household project, would not be listened to. She pushed its wishes, its earnest cries aside no matter what. Because, to her, there was nothing more important than fulfilling her whims as they related to tinkering around the house.

This involved not only the arbitrary movement/rearrangement of heavy furniture, but also the cleaning—the constant cleaning—she felt compelled to perform. And it was a performance, for there was nothing that legitimately needed to be cleaned. It was all a matter of “having something to do,” telling herself she was still “useful.”  Which she was. But that didn’t mean needing to prove as much with her constant movements, movements that were dangerous for a woman of her age. However, like many people, Evelyn refused to acknowledge the passage of time. Or, more specifically, that the passage of time had affected her body in any way whatsoever. Yet the more she tried to fight against it, the more her body fought against her, enraged over her inability to comprehend. To accept that things were not as they once were, least of all internally. Externally, of course, Evelyn had taken many great pains to ensure she looked as far away from her age as possible. There were so many procedures, so many skin care products since the era when Evelyn was growing up back in the 1950s and 1960s, years that were unfathomable to the current generation of youth. Years that sounded ancient to them, but “just like yesterday” to her. “Just like yesterday,” I wasn’t so depressed and regretful about my life choices. As Evelyn wiped the stove repeatedly, she did her best to wipe away this thought as well.

Her husband, Franklin Jacoby (who refused to go by Frank), had died within the last year. And though it had been a major adjustment for Evelyn, she had to admit that she felt freer without him. Unreined. No longer could she feel his judgmental eyes on her back whenever she did the things she so loved doing around the house. The endless cleaning and tinkering and rearranging that drove Franklin up the goddamn wall. Any outsider would understand why, but Evelyn had no objectivity about her actions. How her constant restlessness and anxiety-driven activities made Franklin feel completely unsettled in his own home. Except that it wasn’t—Evelyn had decided to do everything in her power to take over the space, making it entirely her home, with little room for Franklin to just breathe. Try as he might to corner the market on an “area” of the house, it was always overtaken or generally destroyed by Evelyn’s sense of hyper-cleanliness. This obsession of hers with spotlessness driving him mad. As mad as Evelyn clearly was, traipsing around with the mania of Lady Macbeth, day in and day out.

Those few that he confided in about the matter urged him to move. To succumb to what most people in his circle of friends already had years ago: divorce. But, for Franklin, that wasn’t an option. He had been indoctrinated from an early age by his own parents (plus Catholicism) that you never walk out on a marriage. Once you’re in, you’re in. And that’s just the way it has to be. Besides, Franklin reasoned that if he was going to try divorcing Evelyn, he ought to have done it decades ago, when he still had the will to start over again. Now that he saw himself as a decrepit old man, there was no point. Not as far as he was concerned. He wasn’t going to be one of those sad old men who trolled for younger women. He wasn’t even interested in “all that” anymore (which is to say, sex). It bored him. Everything did. One might even note that the only time he experienced something akin to “excitement” was when Evelyn invoked one of his daily rage flare-ups. Just by “being herself.” A.k.a. a whirling dervish, never stopping at any moment. Never being fucking still and existing. Not without trying to “fill the hours.”

Franklin had also been conditioned by Evelyn’s visceral reactions to being “told what to do” to never bother trying to make her understand why her behavior was, in short, unconscionable. If anyone tried to tell her anything whatsoever, though, it was off with their head. She had a gift for turning into a relentless, barking bulldog if approached the wrong way. That is to say, in any manner she didn’t care for. Which, naturally, extended to being told that her “passions” were irksome. Although Franklin had been foolish enough to believe that, with age, Evelyn would “calm down,” “mellow out,” it became apparent very quickly that any such phenomenon was not to be. And while Evelyn was a thoroughly modern woman, Franklin surmised that growing up during a time when women were still expected to treat housework like a full-time job had continued to be an undeniable influence over how she behaved. The compulsion within unquenchable.

Though Evelyn would never admit it, deep down she knew that she was the reason Franklin got driven to an early grave. He was only five years older than her, suffering from a severe heart attack about halfway into his seventy-fifth year. No doubt his blood pressure/stress levels would have been different were it not for Evelyn knowing just how to get under his skin. But Evelyn knew, as she lay on the ground that morning, that Franklin was getting the last laugh from the great beyond. For Evelyn, in all her ecstaticness over being able to truly do whatever she wanted in the house without any prying eyes, had at last bitten off far more than she could chew. She had tried to move a heavy easy chair up the stairs to see how it would look in her room. About halfway to the top, the weight became too much for her to bear, sending her toppling backwards with the chair pinning her to the floor. Though that was the least of her worries, because she could see that the reason she felt particularly “off” was a result of the blood from the back of her head that she saw pooling around her.

If Franklin had still been alive to call 911, she might have stood a chance. Though the thought crossed her mind that he probably wouldn’t even want to help her. That perhaps he would have just stood over her with a grin on his face telling her, “Serves you right for never just sitting the fuck down.” In fact, she could have sworn she saw him now standing over her and saying exactly that. And maybe he was right. Maybe the doer needlessly doing was condemned to be the cause of their own undoing.