Little Bobby’s mother said, “I’m going in to check on dinner. I’ll be right back out. You stay here in the driveway.”
The door closed behind her and Bobby immediately aimed his tricycle at the busy street in front of the house. He pedaled as fast as he could and giggled in glee at the rush of speed.
He launched himself out of the driveway and into the path of an oncoming car. Continue reading “Fiction: Mother’s Helper”
1) A body at rest tends to remain at rest and a body in motion tends to remain in motion until acted on by some outside force.
We walked toward each other. At the corner, our eyes met, and we each knew the other as the soulmate we had been awaiting. We kept moving, past each other, but we turned in perfect synchronicity and walked backward so as not to lose sight. We smiled, knowing that pure love was finally ours.
2) A body will accelerate proportionally to a force acting on it and inversely proportional to the mass.
She was in the crosswalk where an SUV hit her. Her trim, light body spilled onto the pavement, rolling, rolling…
3) For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
I relive those few perfect seconds before her death, and I bathe again in the warmth of her love, by engaging in life in every positive way I can. That includes volunteer work as an elementary school crossing guard where, perhaps, our children might have gone.
Grandmother was feeling a little poorly, so her granddaughter packed some food in a wicker basket to take to her. Because the day was a little chilly, she put on the curve-hugging white sweater. Her jeans accentuated other curves, and she chose her Mary Janes with the one-inch heels. She was a tall girl and rarely wore a higher heel. A bit of lipstick and eyeliner and she was set.
Just before leaving, she donned her red cape and put the hood over her head, pulling her long blonde hair forward so that it flowed down her sweater .
Grandmother’s house was a straight shot to the west, a mere fifteen blocks. But two of those blocks were the tail end of the bad part of the city. It was where the wolves hung out; they liked to prey on girls crossing from one part of town to the other. Also, it was safer for them than the center of the bad part, because a mere wolf couldn’t survive among the strange and dangerous creatures there.
After more than three decades as a priest, Father Joe thought nothing of the two men who came into the church after the mass had begun. Not even when they all but marched down the center aisle, failed to genuflect, and sat in the front pews on either side where two other men already sat. Father Joe was caught up in his work.
When it happened again during the Act of Contrition, he still did not give it more than the most passing notice. People came in late, babies cried, people unwrapped peppermints. Church was a strangely noisy place.
At the end of the first reading, two more men strode down the aisle and seated themselves down front, just as the others had done. Father Joe was starting to notice. He looked briefly at the men and was startled to see the hate on their faces. But he didn’t have time just then to sort it out.
In the middle of the second reading, two more men came in and took their places with the others. The congregation was beginning to stir both at the unusual procession and the lack of respect paid to the altar.
He found the note lying on top of his favorite coffee mug.
Dear John,
I’m leaving you for Stephen Kotzenpillar. I can’t stand another minute in our alleged marriage — especially the stale, boring, unimaginative, unexciting, unfulfilling, so-called sex. I want out, and I’m getting out.
Ewen Macklin made a hole in the side of the bag of wild bird seed and put a plastic cup to it to catch what spilled. He filled six such cups and tipped the bag back so no more of the seed would flow. He put the cups into a little basket and headed toward the back door of his home.
Only a couple of years earlier he would have taken the new bag of bird seed outdoors and held it aloft as necessary to fill the feeders. But that time had passed and the cups and basket were a necessary compromise.
“Joy, joy, joy,” he told himself. Macklin was certain this was the last real joy in his life now that age and death had taken the others from him. Feeding the birds — and, by extension, the squirrels — that came to his yard was an unalloyed, unadulterated delight.
It wasn’t until he started back inside after his happy errand that he saw his neighbor, Jon Burtle, staring at him hatefully. His young son, Jon Jr., who was about nine years old, had an identical expression on his face. Macklin ignored them and went in. He had never engaged the family next door in conversation and they had returned the silence. The Burtles’ vile bumper stickers and the political campaign signs they permitted in their yard indicated there would be no meeting of the minds among neighbors, and that was the end of it.
Timmy held perfectly still, trying to ignore the noise around him. He felt the weight of the dart — his final dart — in his hand. He studied his target intently and, almost without volition, let fly. The dart flew the short distance and popped one of the few red balloons.
“Hey! You did it, kid! Good work!” the booth’s worker said. “Name your prize.”
Timmy pointed to a jumbo-sized stuffed bunny — the only purple one — that had pride of place in the balloon booth. The worker smiled as he retrieved it and handed it over. “There you go, kid. Congratulations.”
“Thanks!”
The barker began calling for more players even before Timmy could turn away. “Just had a big winner here! Big winner! You can be next! Step right up! Three darts for a dime!”
Timmy trotted away from the booth, unable to see where he was going for the huge new toy he carried. Heedless of who might be watching he hugged his big rabbit.
“Mom, we’re in our thirties, now. We’re old enough to hear the truth. Yes, it happened a long time ago, but we want to know the real reason Dad left us.”
Curt nodded to show that his elder sister, Leah, spoke for both of them. “We appreciate that you’ve tried to protect us, and our memories of Dad, but we can’t accept the explanation you’ve always given.”
Margaret looked at them both and sighed. She had known the day would come when they would badger her together rather than separately.
“Fine,” she said. “But I’m going to tell you this story only once. I never want to discuss this again. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” her children said in unison. Continue reading “Fiction: The Truth about Daddy”
“Let’s draw,” Ronald said to Jay. “I like drawing.”
“Okay. So do I.”
Ronald got his nice drawing paper and a new box of colored pencils from the hallway closet. He sat at the little table in his room and began to draw a house.
Jay stood and looked at him.
“Can I draw, too?”
“Sure,” Ronald agreed. “Go home and get some paper and colored pencils and come back and draw.”
Jay stared at Ronald again. Meeting the new kid on the block wasn’t going as well as Jay had hoped. He went home, but he didn’t come back.
Ronald’s mother, Bettina, confronted him gently when she realized Jay had gone.
“You sent him home for his own colored pencils and paper?”
“Yeah, and he didn’t come back. Maybe he didn’t have any.”
“You could have easily shared your pencils and paper.”
Ronald looked up from his drawing. He gave his mother the look all children give their parents, the one that wordlessly says, “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. How can you be so dumb?”
Bettina ignored the look. “Ronald, in this life you can keep your colored pencils to yourself, or you can have friends.”
Ronald’s face took on a quizzical expression; his mother thought it was preferable to the previous one. She went on with her housework but looked in on Ronald from time to time. He was sitting stock still, mulling the Hobson’s choice he had been given.
Bettina grew tired of the boy’s pondering after a while. “Well? What have you decided?”
Ronald picked up the orange pencil and calmly set to work on the chimney of his house.
“I’d rather have colored pencils.”
He didn’t see the shiver that shook his poor mother.
*
Forty-six years later, a falling tree claimed Ronald’s life. Four people attended his perfunctory funeral: his widowed mother, her sister, a cousin who attended only because he happened to be in town that week, and his boss at the drafting firm.
Before the coffin was closed, Bettina gave the funeral director a new box of colored pencils. “Please put these in his inside suit pocket. He always carried a box with him.”
*
A month later, the principal of Ronald’s old elementary school called Bettina. “The children will be drawing today if you’d like to come watch.”
She met the principal at his office and he led her down a short hallway to the kindergarten room. She looked through the window in the door and saw the children paired off. Each child had a piece of paper, and a single box of colored pencils rested between them.
“Is this what you had in mind?” the principal asked.
“It’s exactly what I wanted to see. It’s so important that they learn at an early age to share.”
“I couldn’t agree more. And we’re so pleased you’re sharing your late son’s art supplies with the school. It’s a good gift in these hard budget times. I’m sure he would be pleased, too.”
Bettina could almost hear her late son screaming at this injustice, and she simply smiled at the children taking turns with Ronald’s colored pencils.
Katydid sat on the couch and looked at the bare, boring linoleum floor. She had nothing better to do.
Mommy had been lucky enough to get a job at a diner and was gone most of the day. There was no TV, no computer to play games on, no one to play with, and only three books, all of which she’d read dozens of times. She stared at the floor, trying not to cry from sheer exasperation and misery and memory.
This isn’t real, she thought. This isn’t my life. This isn’t real. This isn’t real.
Over and over again. It became her mantra as she stared at the floor and let her eyes go unfocused. She gradually gave up thinking the words and let herself fall into the belief that what she was living was not real.