Flaw Salad

Author’s note

This short story is something I wrote for a specific lit mag prompt about celebrities in weird parenting situations. It was mostly a laugh, but also a way to work out some feelings about her show. It is deranged, surreal, and unpolished. But fun! I hope you enjoy the ride.

Fever consumed Madonna. When she woke in the ICU, flashes of memory bombarded her. Nurses and doctors entering and leaving. Faces of loved ones sporting looks of concern and pity. A strange howling from the room next door. And, of course, there was the egg. In her most vivid flashback, Madonna could picture a scene in which she squatted over her hospital bed and laid a football-sized, opal-esque egg. It was achingly beautiful, illuminated by the strange red glow in her room that night. She cradled it and sang to it, swearing to protect it until the end of time. She looked about the room now, desperate to find her treasured egg, and she saw only the standard trappings of a hospital room. “Why are there so few flowers?” she thought. “Shouldn’t there be more flowers?” Apparently the egg had been a dream. 

Once recovered, Madonna headed home. Her beloved Celebration Tour had been postponed, but she was eager to return to work. In the hospital, she found the strength to be grateful for this new opportunity to revise her show. She had new ideas for large, bright setpieces. Higher-energy routines. A glorious, life-affirming rendition of Like A Virgin. Her fans would love all the love she was ready to pour into this career retrospective. She was excited, motivated, and reassured by the bounty of flowers and gifts overflowing in every corner of her home. “They do love me,” she sighed to herself. Everything was going to be okay. Better than okay. Everything was going to be great.

As Madonna settled into the plush comfort of her own bed, she surveyed her bedroom and caught sight of a peculiar sort of sheen behind one of the baskets. She dragged herself out of bed to move the obstruction and confirm her suspicion. It was the egg. She screamed and fainted. When she came to, she was in bed, still terrified. She ripped her arm away from a nurse who was trying to comfort her. Pointing toward the egg, she screeched, “What is that?” The nurse, confused, looked to Madonna’s son David, who sat overseeing the scene from an armchair near the window. 

“What’s what, Mother?” 

“That egg!” Madonna’s voice was shrill and tight, which did not faze David. He was all too familiar with this side of his superstar parent. “Where the fuck did it come from?”

“I assume it was a gift. People have been worried about you.” He stood up. “Let me see who it’s from.”

“Stay away from it!” Madonna shrieked. Then, after a beat, she changed her mind. “No. No actually, David, honey, will you please take it away?”

“Are you sure? Don’t you want me to check the card?”

“Just get rid of the fucking thing,” she growled. The new darkness in her voice did alarm David, and he carried the egg from her room without another word.

Madonna reasoned that her egg-laying dream must have been inspired by the gift, which she must have seen before it was transported from the hospital room to her bedroom. Surely, that was all. She still didn’t want to see it, but she put to rest any notion that it was, in fact, an egg she had laid. “Don’t be an idiot,” she told herself, and she let herself drift to sleep.

Unfortunately, when she woke up, she once again found the egg in her room. A similar episode of screaming and demands of removal followed, this time featuring Rocco instead of David. Her children were taking shifts monitoring her recovery. She made sure Rocco understood that she wanted the egg removed from the entire house, never to be returned. Rocco removed the egg from her presence and asked one of the house staff to discard it. When it once again appeared in Madonna’s bedroom, that worker was fired. Madonna was livid, and the entire house cowered. Her eldest child, Lourdes, personally oversaw the donation of the egg to a local charity organization and returned to show her mother a video of the egg being carried away. Madonna finally relaxed.

Once again that night, she woke to find the egg in her bedroom. This time, fear replaced anger. She had seen the video. The egg was gone. It had been taken away. This wasn’t possible. Or was the video a hoax? Would Lourdes do such a thing to her poor, ailing parent? No, Lourdes wasn’t evil. Not her Little Star. She wouldn’t. This egg was the evil thing. Madonna was sure of it. She needed to destroy it. Mustering all of her strength, she carried the egg to her window. It was surprisingly heavy, yet comfortable. Holding it felt right. She found herself unwilling to let go, and a song started emerging from deep within her as she stood at the window. But fear drove her on. She dropped the egg from the window and watched it shatter on the ground below. Some kind of purplish goo oozed from it, and Madonna looked away. It hurt her somehow.

In the morning, the egg had returned, unharmed. Madonna’s terror was accompanied by a sense of relief, though she tried not to notice it. She was on a mission now to destroy the egg by any means necessary, and over the next several weeks, she tried every scheme she could imagine. She threw it out windows and into the sea. She set it on fire. She gave it away (though, strangely, the recipients never seemed to remember the gift the next day). She shipped it to foreign countries. She even locked it in a vault. Still, always, it returned. And each time, she was a little happier to see it.

Finally, after several weeks of effort to rid herself of her burden, Madonna tried the only thing she hadn’t yet: She accepted the egg into her heart. Since it was so determined to belong to her, she decided to allow herself to belong to it. 

During this period, as she recovered from her illness, Madonna’s caretakers and loved ones grew increasingly concerned. 

“Mom’s been a little erratic, don’t you think?” said Lourdes during cocktail hour.

“And secretive,” added David.

“What’s with the egg statue she’s always carrying around?” asked Rocco.

“I tried to ask her about it,” said Lourdes. “She screamed at me.”

“Same thing happened to me,” said David.

Rocco winced. “Me too.”

“Should we do something?” David’s question was directed more to his drink than the room.

“No.” Rocco was decisive. “Leave her alone. Let her recover. You know how she is. She wouldn’t listen to us anyway.”

“You’re right,” said Lourdes. They all agreed the best course of action was to ignore the egg. It became a kind of grotesque deformity one could only acknowledge through discreet glances at fellow onlookers. Beyond that, staff and family maintained the comfort of silence. It certainly wasn’t the first eccentricity they’d learned to tolerate from her.

Once she made the decision to love the egg as her child—she did lay it, after all—Madonna’s connection to her new offspring grew strong. Within a few days, she and the egg were able to communicate with one another. At first, it was just a sensation. She could feel when the egg needed things. Heat. Song. Water. To be held. But soon the requests came in the form of a voice inside her head. It began as single words here and there. “Outside.” “Sing.” “Car.” Then it became phrases. “Hold me.” “Show me ocean.” “Take me to a movie.” By the end of a month, the egg and Madonna were having full-on conversations.

One disappointment for Madonna was that she did not get the privilege of naming the egg, like she had her other children. Rather, she was informed its name was Lex. She was also informed that Lex had come to help her. They (Madonna could not discern a gender and when she asked, Lex responded, “I do not trouble myself with such things”) had been sent to correct the problems with her Celebration Tour. 

“Oh, I already know what to do about that,” she cooed to her darling child. 

“Nonsense!” said Lex. Madonna was surprised and hurt. “You’ve made a mess of it.”

“I have?” 

“Yes, but don’t worry. I’ll set it straight.”

Madonna felt immeasurable gratitude for this new late-in-life child, and she couldn’t wait to see what they became—and what they helped her become. She surrendered creative control of the show to Lex, implementing every suggestion they made. When Lex told her to add a skit where she pretends to be a young version of herself begging to get into a club, she made it happen. She did think it was a bit odd, but she trusted Lex. An indestructible telepathic egg she laid in a fever dream probably knows something she doesn’t, she reasoned. She added fire and robed men chanting, per Lex’s instructions. She scrapped her bright, theatrical performance of Like a Virgin and replaced it with Die Another Day. Like a Virgin would play during a costume change with visuals showcasing her friendship with Michael Jackson, at Lex’s behest.

When her tour partners questioned her decisions, she had a simple answer.

“This fire and Gregorian chanting doesn’t feel very celebratory,” someone might say.

“Bitch, I’m Madonna.”

It was impossible to argue. 

So, they watched her transform her Celebration Tour from something grand and lively into something somber and bizarre. Favored dancers left. New, unskilled dancers appeared. Previously choreographed routines became chaotic displays of running back and forth. No one understood the decisions, and only the diest of die-hard loyalists stayed by her side. They all worried about her mental state. 

Doctors assured everyone she had made a full recovery from her illness, but she still seemed out of it. Off. She slurred her speech. She stumbled through rehearsals. She barely seemed to register where she was and struggled to connect one moment to the next. For months, she behaved like a drunk, though they never saw her take a drink. 

Lex became impossible to ignore. Madonna carried them everywhere she went, no longer keeping her child a secret. She spoke of and for Lex. When a set needed to be changed into something darker, she would dictate Lex’s instructions. “Lex says this number looks too polished. We need to make it more organic. They want you to add more running.”

In private, the team discussed their concerns, but no one had any clue what to do. If any artist had earned the right to make an incomprehensible and unhinged show, supposedly dictated by an egg-shaped statue, it was Madonna. She had paid her dues. Besides, they told themselves, no matter what Madonna does, her fans will love her for it. They’ll probably call this “avant garde” and “brave.” They laughed about this, afraid that without gallows humor, they may despair over all they had lost in these revisions. Anyway, the venues were booked, the tickets were sold, and opening night was about to happen, whether they liked it or not.

Madonna’s other children did try, just once, to intervene. They gathered together and told their mother her obsession with Lex had reached untenable levels. She really should speak to someone. Madonna took great offense, cried, screamed, and berated her children for their ingratitude. “After all I’ve given you, this is how you treat me? This is how you treat your sibling?” None of the brood wished to battle, so they all dropped the matter immediately. 

When opening night arrived, the apprehension was palpable—for everyone but Madonna and Lex, that is. Unlike her worried team, who paced and snapped at each other backstage, Madonna and Lex sat in beatific repose. She held her offspring in her lap and smiled as she watched her frenetic team bring their vision to life. It was going to be great. She knew it. 

The show itself was exactly what it was designed to be. It was messy, dark, and strange. The audience seemed unsure how to respond. During several points, entire sections of the crowd sat down in confusion. Many gasped when Madonna nearly fell from the great glass cage that carried her over their heads, and the producers were grateful for her safety strap. They worried about her long, slurred speeches. How much of her mental state could the crowd discern? Would it matter? She performed the songs. She entertained, as promised. They would never know the show they could have seen. All they knew was the show they got. And they seemed to be satisfied enough. There were some stragglers who sat dumbfounded long after the lights came on. Ushers had to encourage some fans to get to their feet and leave. But for the most part, the team was relieved to see a normal-enough reaction to the concert. The gays were sufficiently satisfied.

Lourdes had come for opening night, and she wandered backstage to congratulate her mother. What she found frightened her. On the floor of her dressing room, Madonna lay in a fetal position, naked, cradling Lex. She was singing to them, and Lourdes recognized the tune. It was Little Star. Her song. A wave of nausea overcame her.

At that moment, David appeared. He looked from his mother to his sister. When he saw Lourde’s expression of shock and hurt, he said, “It’ll be okay.”

“How do you know?”

He pulled the door closed and shrugged. “Look, she’s happy.”

“She’s not well.” 

“Who is?” 

Lourdes considered this. “People who aren’t carrying egg statues around like babies, David.”

David laughed. “She did the show, didn’t she?”

“She did, but you saw her. She was stumbling and slurring. She barely seemed there.”

“I mean, what are we going to do? Pull her off the tour?”

“We should.”

“I don’t think she can afford to cancel it twice.” 

Lourdes scoffed. “Is money all we care about?” 

“No, but…” David tried to find the right words. His sister was not wrong. But there were bigger things to consider. “Think of her fans, Lourdes. They need her. And she needs this. Do you think she’d survive another cancellation? This seems to be the only thing keeping her going.”

David had a point. “So we just let her keep going like this?”

“Well, we keep an eye on it. See how she does on the tour. Get her help after.”

“And just leave her with that—that—thing?” 

“Lex,” David corrected.

“Lex.” 

The siblings erupted into laughter.