two stories: your choice

It so happens that the same day Janna at Something She Wrote encouraged me to submit some of my writing to magazines or online sites, I happened across a short story contest. I took it as a sign and decided to enter. The rules are basically that it must be less than 600 words-- the purpose is to convey a story or character study in a very limited amount of time.

I actually have written two things that fit this requirement, one from a long time ago, about the same time I wrote the story I posted a couple weeks ago, and another just recently inspired by my trip home and my last post. I can't decide which to send. Because I have some of the best writers I know as readers of my blog, I thought I would take a vote. You can leave me a comment with your choice, or there's a poll to the right if you'd rather be anonymous-- either "Last to Leave" or "They were Us." I really appreciate honest opinions.

Here we go...


Last to Leave

The barista (a trumped-up name for coffee servant, she smirked) slid around the edge of her counter and over to the abandoned table in the window. In one swoop she folded the open newspaper and placed it on the counter where she’d remember to throw it away later.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright, she recanted in her head as, out of reflex more than caring, she grabbed the blue-handled broom and began to sweep up the dust of the day. It was dark out now, and the clock on the wall ticked one second closer (to what?) as she glanced up at the silver face. Her English 301 test was at 8 a.m., only one night left to study.

The door opened again, and the pile she had gathered blew under a table nearby. Without looking up, she said, “we’re closed,” and, crouching, Curse, bless me now... she reached out and brought back the stray debris.

“Just me,” he snapped and grabbed the newspaper from the counter, plopping himself down on the red velvet couch in the window. He immediately slid the sports section out and threw the rest on the cushion next to him, a pile of misfolded newsprint.

“I’ll be done in a minute.” She tossed the dustpan’s contents outside where the strong south wind caught them.

“Well, hurry up. I’ve got places to be.”

After locking the door she walked back to the counter to count the cash drawer. Slowly thumbing the ones, her mind drifted. After four years, she had hoped they would still be in love. Something had happened to him, something had changed him, made him full of self-hate and anger, and borderline-abusive. Can you be such a thing? Seems like either you are or you aren’t.

She lost count and started over.

“What are you doing?” he grumbled without looking up from the paper, snapping the middle fold back into place.

She held on to the edge of the sugar-strewn counter, steadying herself, and tapped her fingernails on the formica, exhaling slowly, quietly. It was time to go.

Pencilling in the final tally in the book, she slid the register drawer closed and locked it, placing the key back in the pencil cup. Do not go gentile.... She grabbed her purple scarf off the coat rack and wrapped it tightly around her neck, flipped off the lights, unlocked the door, and held it open for him.

“Ok.”

Tossing the open newspaper onto the coffee table, he breezed past her out the door, turning left towards his car. She hesitated for a moment, holding her breath in her throat and leaning her head on the open door, staring blankly at the paper piled on the couch and table. Poetry rumbled in her head; she let it win. She shut and locked the door and turned towards him.

“Car’s here,” he said, pointing with his keys down the block to the left, but she turned to the right, into the wind. Rage, rage.




They were Us

“I took that picture when we were visiting New York, remember, at Christmas, and it was so cold. We went to that bagel place after the Empire State building to get out of the wind. I thought the reflection on the glass and that red table was interesting.”

Dad turned the page in the photo album, passing naked mannequins in ice encrusted windows, me and my brother smiling in front of a giant stuffed giraffe at FAO Swartz, and snowy branches rustling in Central Park. His “interesting” pictures always left our family vacations looking like a artist’s portfolio as much as snapshots of memories. He picked up a new album and quickly began flipping pages.

“Wait, go back,” I said and put my hand on a page of ancient-looking black and white prints.

My mother stared back at me from the page, but it wasn’t the mother I recognized, not the woman sitting in the red recliner across the room with the crossword puzzle book in her lap, purple cat-eyed reading glasses resting on the tip of her nose. This young woman, her long jet black hair just tickling her narrow shoulders, stared into the camera lens, coyly and yet blatantly flirting with the man behind the shutter.

“Oh, yes, this is a series I did with your mom behind a fan,” he said proudly, sitting up taller. “See here, I was trying to get the reflection off the old metal fan blades to blur the edges...."

“Mmhmm...” I murmured, caught up in that face, so much like my own and yet so completely hers, and those thin fingers, not yet marked by age. I reached out with my own young hand and ran my fingertip down the edge of the plastic divider. This was my mother before she was my mother, looking more herself in the photo than she looked now, full of life and confidence, before children could reap her youth.

My mother, the mother I knew, stirred in her chair and sat up. “I remember that,” she said dreamily.

“You’d make me pose in the weirdest of places doing the dumbest things. Sit there and look blank. Look over your shoulder and smile. I’m glad you’ve found new models, like those mannequins.” As she laughed, her glasses slipped off, and she threw my father a look that, for just a second, recalled the face from the photo.

Later, laying in bed with Michael, I told him about my discovery.

“She was so beautiful. No kids, no real responsibilities other than to each other, free and in love and really living.”

“Yeah. They had to have been young once, you know,” he yawned.

“But to actually see it, see those feelings right there on her face... so intimate. And it’s not just that they were young, but that they were... us.”

A soft noise, a giggle in a familiar voice, came from the next room. Concentrating, I could hear my parents talking but couldn’t make out what they were saying.

Michael rolled over and looked at me in the dark. “Will you still love me in thirty years?”

“Thirty years more than I do already.”