Do You Fear the Conference of Desires

That question is not rhetorical, reader. This tale is for your edification as well as mine. In fact, if we choose to let the culture know about the Conference of Desires, we then must ask whether our neighbors should be allowed to enter it and choose from it what they please, regardless of the horrors they may purchase.

To first learn about the Conference, you must first learn about the world around it.

The start should be at death because the end of a life births honesty.

Last week, my mouth dropped at the words of my bedridden mentor—no, the word mentor is too distant. Gregory was more than a mentor to me. Yes, Gregory was twenty years my senior, and on some days it felt like my notes app was full of every word he said. However... the belly laughs we shared and our silent mornings of embracing one another's bad news, that's more than mentorship, that's the sweetest friendship there is, and may God keep granting me that.

In a small no-name hospital on a winter night, Gregory Smith—such a bland name but one that changed lives and meant everything to me—broke my heart with his words on his deathbed.

Slumping in my chair in disbelief at his statement, I let the empty beep, beep, beep on his heart monitor machine speak for me. The ugly hum of the hospital's air conditioning hit a depressing note to fit the mood. I sought the window to my left for peace, for hope; both denied. The clouds covered the moon.

"Madeline, Madeline," he called my name. "I said, I wasted my life. Did you hear me? I need to tell you why."

"Yes, I heard you," I said. "Yes, could you please not say things like that."

"'Could you please not say things like that,'" he mocked me. His white-bearded face turned in a mocking frown. My stomach churned. Why was he being so mean? People are not always righteous on their deathbeds, but they're honest.

"Could you please not do that?" I asked.

"Listen to yourself!" Gregory yelled. Hacking and coughing, Gregory wet the air with his spit, scorching any joy in the room. He wasn't done either. Bitter flakes of anger fluttered from his mouth. "Aren't you tired of begging? You need to cut it out—you're closer to the grave than you think."

"Gregory, what are you talking about?"

His coughing erupted. Red spit stained his bed and his beard. His body shook under its failing power.

Panicking, I could only repeat his name to him. "Gregory, Gregory, Gregory."

The emergency remote to call the nurse flashed, reminding me of its existence. Death had entered the room, but I wouldn't let it take Gregory. I leaped for it from my chair. Gregory grabbed my wrist. The remote stayed untouched. His coughing fits didn't stop. The eyes of the old man told me he didn't care that he hurt me, that he would die before he let me touch the remote, and that he needed me to sit and listen.

Lack equals desire, and at a certain threshold that lack turns desire to desperation, and as a social worker, I know for a fact desperation equals danger. But what was he so desperate for? So desperate that he could hurt me?

"Okay, Gregory. I get it. Okay," I said and took my seat.

I crossed my legs, let my heart race, and swallowed my fears while my friend battled death one more time. That time he won. Next time was not a battle.

But for now, the coughing fit, adrenaline, and anger left him, and he spoke to me in the calmness he was known for.

"Hey, Mad."

"Hey, Gregory."

"I don't want you to be like me, Mad."

"I eat more than McDonald's and spaghetti, Gregory. So I don't think I'll get big like you, fat boy."

We laughed.

"No, I mean the path you're going down," he said. "The Gregory path. It ain't good."

"Gregory, you're a literal award-winning social worker. You've changed hundreds of lives."

"And look at mine..."

"Gregory, cancer, it's..."

"It ain't the cancer. My life wasn't good before. I was dying a slow death anyway; cancer just sped the process up, like you. I was naive like you. I was under the impression if I made enough people's lives better, it'd make my life better. Don't be sitting there with your legs crossed all offended."

I uncrossed my legs.

"No, you can cross 'em back. That's not the point."

I crossed my legs back.

"See, you just do what people say."

I crossed them again.

"What do you want, Gregory?"

"No, Mad! What do you want? That's the point."

Four honest thoughts ping-ponged in my head:

1. A million dollars and a dumb boyfriend, just someone to talk to and hold me, among other things.

2. A family of my own.

3. For this conversation to end; Gregory started to scratch at my heart with his honesty. I—like you—prefer to lie to myself.

I only chose to say my most righteous thought.

"I want to be like you, Gregory."

Beeping and flashing as if in an emergency, the heart rate machine went wild; Gregory fumed. He threw his pudding cup from his table at me. It flew by, missing me, but droplets sprayed me on their ascent to the wall.

"I'm dying and you're lying! It's the same lies I told myself that got me here in the first place. I never touched a cigarette, a vape, or a cigar, and I'm the one with cancer. Trying to help low-lives who didn't care to put out a cigarette for twenty years is what's killing me."

"You get one life, Mad. No redos. Once it's over you better make sure you got what you wanted out of it and don't sacrifice what you want for anything because no one worth remembering does."

His words made me go still and shut down. The dying man in the hospital bed filled me with a sense of dread and danger that the toughest, poverty-starved, delinquent parent would struggle with.

His face softened into something like a frown.

"Oh, Mad. Sometimes you're like a puppy," Gregory said and I opened my mouth to speak. Shooing me away with a hand wave he said, "Save your offense for after I'm dead. I'm just saying you're all love, no thoughts beyond that. Anyway, I knew this wouldn't work for you so I arranged for hopefully your last assignment as a social worker. Be sure to ask her about the Conference of Desires."

"Last assignment? But I don't want to quit. I love my job."

Gregory smiled. "Stop lying to yourself, Mad. When the time comes be honest about what you really want."

"But," he said, "speaking of puppies. How's my good boy doing?"

"Adjusting," I said. "I'll take good care of him, Gregory. I promise."

"I know you will. You're always reliable."

"Then why are you trying to change me?"

"I—" he paused to consider. As you should, dear reader, if you plan to tell the culture about the Conference of Desires. The Conference changes them. Do you wish to do that?

Regardless, he soon changed the subject, and the rest of our conversation was sad and casual. He died peacefully in his sleep a couple of minutes after I left.

The next day, I did go to what could be my final assignment as a social worker. It was to address a woman said to have at least twelve babies running amok.

Driving through the neighborhood told me this place had deeper problems.

Stray poverty-inflicted children wandered the streets of this stale neighborhood. Larger children stood watch on porches, their eyes running after my car. Smaller or perhaps more sheepish children hid under porches or peered out from their windows. However, the problem was none of these kids should be here. It was the middle of the school day.

Puttering through the neighborhood my GPS struggled for a signal and my eyes struggled to find house 52453. A few older kids started hounding after my car in slow—poorly disguised as casual—walks that transformed into jogs as I sped up. The poor children—their faces caked in hunger. Before Gregory trained it out of me I always would have a bagged lunch for needy children or adults in the neighborhood we entered.

Well, Gregory did not so much train it out of me as circumstance finally cemented his words. The details are not important reader, just understand poverty and hunger can make a man's mind go rich in desperation. Hmm, same for lack and desire I suppose.

A child jumped in front of my car. The brakes screeched to a halt. My Toyota Corolla ricocheted me, testing the will of my seat belt, and shocking me. The wild-eyed boy stayed rooted like a tree and only swayed with the wind. His clothes so torn they might tear off if the breeze picked up.

I prepared to give a wicked slam of my horn but couldn't do it. The poor kid was hungry. That wasn't a crime. However, I got the feeling the kids behind me who broke into a sprint did want to commit a crime.

The child gave me the same empty-eyed passivity as I swung my car in reverse. Adjusted, I moved the stick to drive to speed past him. A tattered-clothed red-haired girl came from one side of the street and joined hands with the wild-eyed boys and then a lanky kid came from another side and did the same. Then all the children flooded out.

In front of me stood a line of children, holding hands, blocking my path, dooming me. Again, my hand hovered over the horn but I just couldn't do it... their poor faces.

SMACK

SMACK

SMACK

A thrum sound hit my car from the back pushing me forward, my head banged on the dash.

"What's it? Where?" I replied dumbly to the invasion, my mouth drying. The thrumming sound bounced from my left and then right and with the sound came an impact, an impact almost tossing me to the other seat and back again. My seat belt tightened, resisting, pressing into my skin and choking me. It was the boys running after me. They arrived.

One by one, the boys pressed their faces up against the windows and one green-eyed, olive-toned boy in an Arsenal jersey climbed the hood of the car, with fear in his bloodshot eyes as if he was the victim.

The bloodshot-eyed boy was the last to press his face against the glass. And I ask that you don't judge me but I must be honest. Fear stewed within me but there was so much hatred peppered in that soup.

I was a social worker. I spent my life helping kids like them. Now here was my punishment. Is this what Gregory meant by a wasted life?

The bloodshot-eyed boy, made of all ribs, slammed his fist into the window. I shook my phone demanding it work. The window spider-webbed under the boy's desperate power. I tossed my phone frustrated and crying. Through tears, I saw the boy grinning for half a second at his efforts.

The boy could break the glass.

He then steadied himself and reeled back and struck again.

A clean break.

Glass hailed on me. I shielded my eyes to protect myself and to not see the truth of what was happening. This can't be real. And I cursed them all, I cursed all those poor children. If words have power those kids are in Hell.

In the frightening hand-made darkness of raining glass, I felt his tiny hand peek through the window and pull at me. I screamed. Grabbing air he moaned and groaned until he found my wrist. The boy pulled it away from my face and opened his jaw for a perfect snap.

Other windows burst around me, broken glass flew flicking my flesh. I smelled disease-ridden teeth.

A gunshot fired. The kids scattered. Writing about their scattering now breaks my heart, all that hatred is compassion now. It was how they ran. They didn't run like children meant to play tag on playgrounds, not even like dogs who play fetch, but like roaches—the scourge of humanity, a thing so beneath mankind it isn't suited to live under our feet our first instinct is to stomp it out. I am crying now. The scene was the polar opposite of my childhood. No child deserves this.

An angel came for me dressed in a blue and white polka-dot dress. She pulled me inside her house, despite my shock, despite my weeping.

She locked and bolted her doors and sat me on her couch.

Are you religious? I am? Was? As a result of the previous events and what happened on the couch, my faith has been in crisis. I didn't learn about the Conference of Desire in Sunday School after all.

Regardless, I'm afraid this analogy only works for those who believe in the celestial and demonic. It was miraculous I made it to safety. In the physical and metaphysical sense, I was carried here.

I knew I was exactly where something great and beyond Earth wanted me to be. I could not have gotten there without an otherworldly helping hand. Yet, was this a helping hand from Heaven or Hell?

My host got me a glass of water which I gratefully swallowed. And I took in my surroundings. My host was a mother who loved her children. So many of them. Portraits of her holding each one individually hung from maybe each part of each wall, and their cries and whines hung in the air where I assumed the nursery was. She had a lot of children.

"Thank you. Thank you. So much for that," I told her and then went into autopilot. "Are you Ms. Mareta?"

"I am," she said. The sun poured from a window right behind her, as if she really was an angel.

"Hi, I'm Madeline. I'm from social service and—"

"You don't stop, do you? I see why Gregory thinks so highly of you."

That did make me stop.

"You know Gregory?"

"Oh, he was my husband at one point."

My jaw dropped. She smiled at me and bounced a baby on her lap. Gregory never mentioned he was married. We told each other everything. Why did he never mention her? And there we stayed. I dumbfounded and observing the bouncing baby, dribbling his slobber on itself as happy as can be and Ms. Mareta mumbling sweet-nothings to the baby. The smell of baby powder lofted between us.

"You're supposed to tell me you got a complaint about me and my children?" she whispered to me.

"The complaint was from him wasn't it?"

"You bet it was. Yes it was, yes it was," she said playing with the baby and knocking noses with it.

"Why?" I asked. "Why am I here Ms. Mareta?"

"So, I could tell you all about the Conference of Desires. But to tell you that I have to tell you why Greg and I got divorced."

A brick flew through the window behind her. I leaped off the couch as it crashed to the ground. Ms. Mareta protected the baby and stood up.

"Oh, dear," Ms. Mareta said. "It seems like the kids are finally standing up to me. We better do this quickly. Come on, come on let's go upstairs."

"Wait, should I call the police or—"

"If you want to once you're gone but they don't come out here anymore. Those brats outside call them all the time. Come. Come."

And with that, I followed her to her steps.

Loud mumblings formed outside.

"Perhaps the most important thing to know about why Gregory and I got divorced was that after I had my second child I was deemed infertile. This sent me spiraling.

"My coping started off innocent enough but a bit strange. I bought the most life-like doll possible. It's niche but common enough for grieving mothers. My days and nights were spent changing it and making incremental changes to make it seem more and more real."

The screaming of the babies upstairs grew louder. I grew certain she had more than twelve children there.

"Until one day," she said and Ms. Mareta looked at me to make sure I was paying attention. "I fell sick. Gregory was out of town then so I was alone for two days. I struggled, worried sick for the doll. Once I was strong enough to get up I raced to my doll. It was fine of course it was it didn't need me. I was just kidding myself. A mother is needed, I was not a mother."

There was heavy banging downstairs. The kids were trying to break in.

"So, I sought to be a mother by any means. One day I waited by the bus stop and to put it simply I stole a child. Of course, this child didn't need me or want me. Therefore I was not a mother. Therefore, I gave him back.

"His mother, the courts, and the newspapers didn't see what I did as so simple. Can you believe it? Kidding, I know I was insane. Someone did see my side though and gave me a little map, to a certain crossroad, that brought me to the Conference of Desires."

"But," I asked struggling to catch my breath—these stairs were long and we finally reached the top—"Why'd he leave you for that?"

"He hated what I brought back."

"The Conference of Desires is a place where you can buy an object that fits your wildest dream. I bought a special bottle that could reverse age. A bottle that could make any hard-working adult who needed a break, a baby who needed a mother.

"Don't look at me like that. They all consented. Some even came to me. You'd be surprised how many parents would kill to just have a break for a day, just be a baby again. They can change any time they want to go back. All they have to do is ask."

The baby she held in her arms cooed.

"Do you understand what that baby is saying?" I asked.

Ms. Mareta just smiled at me.

"You better leave now. The children are at the door and boy do they hate me for taking their parents."

"Are you going to be okay?"

"Oh, I doubt that. There are only so many bullets in a gun and my little army is made of babies. This will be the end of me I'm afraid but I get to go out living my dream." She opened the nursery and I swear to you there were at least fifty babies in there. Baby powder—so much baby powder—invaded my nose. The babies took up every inch of that room from walls to windows, blocking out the light.

"Go out the back," she said. "Take my car, take the map, and make sure you live your dream, honey."

So, reader, I know how to get to the Conference of Desires. It can get you whatever you want in life but it can also damn an untold number of people. Those kids were starving all because it wasn't the desire of their parents to take care of them. Ms. Mareta gave them an out. Ms. Mareta made the adults into babies and the children into monsters. That's unfair. The moralist would call it evil.

However, Ms. Mareta was all smiles at the end of her life and Gregory feels he wasted his. Is it our right to deny anybody their desires?