Margaret Atwood, in “Happy Endings,” presents us with John and Mary. Through several plot scenarios, she makes the argument that what matters is not Who does What, but How and Why.
Jane Martin’s Beauty has a debate about what matters. Simon Armitage’s “You’re Beautiful” makes one think about what is authentic and what is not. Isaac Asimov’s “Segregationist” unsettles absolute ideas about what is best. And Mark Twain’s “The £1,000,000 Bank-Note” humorously asks what values you would bet on. What about you? What is worthwhile to you?
Take on Atwood’s plot challenge and write a story in which John and Mary are characters to show what matters. Do not say what it is, but rather use your storytelling to illustrate what you want readers to see.
Is it the beginnings that are fun, or the middles, or the endings?
Do stories start when John and Mary meet? Can stories begin in any other way?
Must stories end with death? Is death the only ending, the only authentic ending there is? Do endings matter?
What matters in a story?
Roundtable Conversation 
Short Story: Mary’s one last second
In the meeting room, Mary is presenting her new project seriously. Forty minutes later, she finishes her presentation and then clapping sounds from her colleges go up admiringly, especially from her big boss, John. Mary works here for 7 months and another 2 weeks. She has just been promoted last week which is quite amazing for this short period of time. However, for John, this is reasonable.
After the meeting has come to an end, John has an appointment with Mary privately. He tells her about his new magnifique project which he must settle down abroad for a big while and the point is that he needs her help. However, he needs to ask her first because it means that Mary must be far away from her parents. That’s what he cares and worries about most. But Mary says ‘Yes!’ to John without thinking even just one second. She gives him a reason that this job is her dream and her entire life. She has been craving for this experience since she was in her high school.
Both John and Mary go abroad to a number of countries for dealing and working with many business partners. This cycle of work moves round like this for several years. Mary comes back to visit her home and her parents only a couple times and surely that her parents do not go against her, because they know that this is her life and her dream. Mary sleeps approximately 25 hours a week and she keeps continuously spending her life like this for several years also. She has no time for taking a break or traveling somewhere else even she’s living abroad in many nice and beautiful places. She eats fast food and does not exercise. And again, she absolutely enjoys this!
John is always with her as a good working partner or as a good boss. This kind of relationship continues. One day, Mary starts to have a fever, she takes a pill and still keeps sitting in front of her laptop. Her hands still type even her eyes are almost closed. Then everything is gone black and blank. Mary has no conscious anymore.
John is the only person who sees what is going to happen with her. He’s looking at her laying down on bed and seeing a group of people wearing long white shirt surrounding her. Everything is so busy, crowded, and noisy. A middle-aged man is doing CPR and everyone in that room tries to help him checking the pressure and the heart rate. The man uses a stimulant for the heart and John knows that there’re many seconds Mary reaches to death. He’s frightened…
One month later, John is in his empty, quiet, and desolate working space as usual. There’s only him sitting absent-minded and thinking about his life in the past and until now. A minute later, the phone rings and that’s a video call from the one he has been missing. That is Mary. Her face pops up on the screen and she smiles feebly but happily. Last month, she had faced with the very critical moment of her life. She felt like there was a few moment she met with heaven and hell. Yes, she really did and she still remembered those feeling very well. After she regained for 2 days, she came to think and decided what to do next. Her parents flew to her right away and left everything behind. They nursed her all day and night without uttering anything. Every day that she slept on her sickbed and watched her parents taking care of her, she had time to see that there was something changed. She saw her dad’s wrinkles. She saw her mom’s gray-hair, and she just acknowledged that her mom’s wearing glasses! When!? She remembered that when she was a university student, her mom did not have to wear them. Also, her dad’s a lot thinner than the last 5 years. Why they’re getting so older and how they become like this?
A thousand of questions and feelings popped up on her mind and she took quite a long time to realize. At the end, she had the answers and knew what to do with her life from now on. She did not think for twice and immediately said goodbye to her dream job. She knew that this was her dream and her goal but at the same time she also knew that this dream was ruining her life and her childhood memories.
Before she flew back to her hometown with her mom and dad, she wanted to say goodbye to her best working partner privately for the last time. John visited her in the hospital and she told him that she’s going to resign and said ‘thank you’ to him for all of the great experiences and good memories. But that was not how it ended. John cried and sobbed without shyness for quite a while. He confessed to her while weeping that he fell in love with her not just as a friend or a working partner, but also his special one. And surprisingly that what John confessed did not surprise Mary that much. This is because she knew it for all the time. However, she did not feel the same way as him. He’s always a boss to her and will still be. Both of them drifted apart…
Mary arrives home but she’s still tired. This is because after she has just experienced with death, her physical and mental condition are not the same anymore. John’s still working abroad and Mary’s living home spending time with her mom and dad. She isn’t craving for her dream, goal, money, or praise anymore. She decides to eat good food, take some time a vacation, do some workout, have good times with mom and dad and so on. Mary thinks that she needs to talk to her parents and learn about what they like and dislike once again. She knows about what her boss like and dislike. While she instead does not know what parents are or aren’t happy with, her mom and dad never forget and know every single little thing and detail about Mary as always. At night, she looks at her parents breathing and she thinks about throughout almost ten years she left, how were them? Why did she get to this point?
One Friday evening Mary – a new girl in town who has just recently moved in to her new apartment- was busy with unpacking all her stuffs while her roommate was watching tv in the living room outside. John came to her apartment to meet Mary’s roommate which was John’s co-worker. So John was there for a business talk but later turned out that he fell in love with his co-worker’s new roommate whose name was Mary. John also had Mary at hello. Then they started dating. Yes, they had a great time but we all know what would come next. John had to move to another city where he would get better position and salary. Which one would he choose? His eye-candy lovely girlfriend or the great opportunity with bunches of money?
If John chooses Mary, everything (might – just leave room for any exception like Mary dies or John cheats on Mary etc) continues like A.
Unfortunately, John didn’t choose Mary. His family had money problem and he did choose his family over Mary. He said that he wish the best for Mary. Mary was devastated. She didn’t know what to feel. Sad? Angry? Her feelings are more like she wanted to hate him but she loved him so much so she couldn’t hate him at all.
They broke up and John left the town.
Mary still hopelessly waited for John to come back and might surprise her with wedding ring. However, these things were just Mary’s daydream.
John settled down with another eye-candy lovely and caring woman.
Mary died alone.
Z
John and Mary die. This is the beginning of the story. They die like glorified lovers do; together… but not exactly, for John’s heart stops beating approximately two seconds before Mary’s does. Ah, those two seconds of utter loneliness. So much for happily ever after, you might think. That is not even half a forever. Fair enough.
Madge throws herself awake that morning in a fit of panic and confusion. The first few words she yells are completely incomprehensible yet somehow make perfect sense, or at least they did when she was dreaming, now she is not so sure.
Her eyes sweep quickly across the bedroom, which she has been sleeping in almost every night for quite some years. She remembers these walls, the lamp on her nightstand, pens and pencils scattered across the writing desk, her diary lays open, crowded with last night’s late hour drunken poetry. This is her room, her life, but still there is something unfamiliar about it… something terribly wrong.
Beside her, Fred rubs his eyes open lazily with an expression of a beached whale, oblivious to Madge’s terrifying glance. It takes him an entire minute to recognize that, and when he does, he asks Madge if she is alright. She is not.
Madge manages to go on and tell Fred about her dream, in a shivering whisper. What if one day you wake up and know that you are not yourself? That you have been someone else before someone that you are now, and before that, someone else, someone else… how would that makes you feel? How would you feel to have loved somebody you couldn’t even remember, to have lived another life in another time?
(continues in the reply)
She sees herself standing at the edge of the sea, Fred’s hand in hers. She sees herself and John growing old together. She sees James, brutally shot, square in the chest. She sees Mary, all dressed up in her wedding gown glory, Mary again as a beggar queen, and again as a lone huntress in the wilderness of Russian wasteland, John the pilot as he lands an experimental jet on the world’s first sky-bound megastructure, James who works at the florist’s shop, Madge the pianist, John who saved a puppy from drowning, poor James eaten alive by crocodiles of the Nile, John who indeed was born as Joan, and Madge, who stole the moon.
John and Mary standing face to face, guns held at each other’s forehead. Do they both wish for death? Another ending. Another ending. Will their love end in hell?
She sees it all. And these, these are all true.
But is anything real at all?
Madge does not know what is happening, but she feels herself fading away. She cries helplessly as Fred reaches out his arms, they hold each other, unknowingly for one last time, as the whole world crumbles outside their window, cold and uncaring. Everything falls apart and the sky unravels, and when they are gone, time stands still like a barley stalk on the windless field.
[PROCESS TERMINATED]
——
Above the chattering of the world sits a dark room, and within it operates a vast machine. Only a strange, whirring sound could be heard from its system as it thinks and thinks tirelessly.
A destiny is concluded, information collected, events recorded. The machine now prepares itself for yet another incursion, as it always does. However, it has discovered a fault within its system, a single glitch that sways the entire course of events, resulting in certain simulants gaining memory of past simulations. The process has since been terminated. But the incursion itself has to be restarted by doing so. It matters little, and so the machine continues.
For time untold it stays in this chamber with a watchful gaze inward, calculations over calculations are made, countless worlds, countless stories, all in search of just one perfect ending. As this, and only this, is the duty it was designed for by the creator, Professor Margaret Atwood, all those years ago. What it discovers, however, is such a grim wonder. To see one beginning turns into infinite endings, all of them bitter, oh, so bitter, like a flower of evil forever unfolding, poisons the land.
Deep in our hearts, everyone knows that everyone dies. So do beginnings matter at all when we know they would end? Some says it is the beginning that matters the most, some says it is the in between. Its mechanical mind could only present the equations; it is a human’s job to define the answer.
The process rinses and repeats, drawn and erased like an obsessed artist’s unfinished masterpiece, a pendulum in motion, unending, as the machine itself is designed to and would run forever until it finds a perfect ending, or until time stops turning. New paths are planned, new streets charted, same old faces, familiar but brand new. Among them lies yet another destiny. Two footsteps approach from different sides of the street. Two pairs of eyes find each other, captivating, as if suspended in eternity…
John and Mary meet;