How I Built My Life: The Reflections of a Housewife (PG)

Okay: normally, I would save this until Sunday, but I honestly can't wait to share this piece with you all. It's basically my response to an article I encountered in which the writer decided to get a divorce to find herself because -- she didn't like the crumbs in her house? Or something? She never really made it clear. 

At any rate, borrowing heavily from the experiences of people I know (while changing details to protect the innocent), I've penned something that mimics the style of the aforementioned essay while telling, I think, a deeper - and much less narcissistic - story. Hope you enjoy!

How I Built My Life

The Reflections of a Housewife

That damned cornice! I’d spent hours nailing the plywood together - and more hours still covering it with the rose damask I’d so carefully selected - yet the mounting was not quite going to plan. Actually, to be more frank, the mounting was evolving into an outright disaster. For some reason, the wall above the living room window would not hold the hardware on one side. As flecks of plaster rained down from above and lightly dusted my hair, I let loose with the filthiest string of profanities I could possibly muster.

“You forgot ‘piss,’” my seven-year-old son brightly noted.

“And ‘damn,” added his older sister.

Right. I’d forgotten they were in the room. A real mother-of-the-year move there, Annora. And when exactly did our children learn to curse like sailors? I’m pretty sure I didn’t intend for that to happen. I’m pretty sure my goal was to raise children with exquisite, Emily-Post-worthy manners.

*****

I once had a lot of goals — though I’m not really sure all of them were truly mine. In junior high, I discovered a gift for languages, so I decided to pursue a career as a military linguist. But this, I think, was my father’s goal and not my own. My immediate relatives had served in the Navy for generations, and Dad had always envisioned his own children plying the family trade. And if you think my being a girl dissuaded him, well — let’s just say you have another think coming. Strangely enough, he was perfectly egalitarian in his overbearing expectations — especially after my brother died.

I also dreamed, in secret, of going to art school. This, I believe, came from the real me. I had a knack for picking up foreign tongues, but said talent was far outclassed by my inborn artistic eye. I was winning quilting and sewing competitions before I learned to drive, and earning ribbons for my floral arrangements not long after. At eighteen, I was secretary of the Granger FHA — a confirmed domestic goddess and top-flight wife material. Right then, I could’ve found myself a man and left the public world behind. So what stopped me? Well, the women’s lib movement was in full swing by the time I graduated from high school. Between that and my Dad, it seemed somehow more - acceptable - to be a pioneer — to grab at a chance to be one of the “first women who [X].” And so I became one of the first women admitted to Annapolis. 

And my other aspirations? Well, sometimes I imagined using my talents to design a line of clothing for real, living women whose bodies were like mine: curvy, soft, and not six feet tall. Sometimes I imagined designing costumes for the Broadway stage — and maybe, at the pinnacle of my career, winning a Tony Award for my efforts. And sometimes I wanted to study math and medicine too; my mind, after all, had always been a lively thing.

Art school happened in time once my children were grown. But everything else was left by the wayside, pushed into the corners where my free time dwelled. That, I suppose, is the reality of being. Eventually - if you’re going to build a life that’s really worth something - you have to choose one main road - one central goal - and allow other turns to recede in the rearview mirror.

My vocation, it appears, was to be a housewife. 

The Right Thing (PG)

Here: have another rage fic! It's super short, but once again, I needed to vent.

*****

I got in the car. He did the right thing.

I drove up the hill. He did the right thing.

I reached the summit. He did the right thing.

I stumbled on my way to the grave site, one of my black heels sinking into a patch of mud. It had rained the previous night, and slate-gray clouds still lingered in the sky, grim and threatening. A hand caught my elbow - I don’t know whose - and I righted myself, pulling my shoe from the sucking mire with a sickening slurp. He did the right thing.

I sat down beneath a fluttering canopy on a plastic folding chair and stared straight ahead at my son’s coffin. It was blue with gold accents, a nod to plans interrupted. The weekend Matt died, he was supposed to be packing for Annapolis. He made another choice instead — one that led to a brief hospital stay and - eventually - a closed-casket wake. The funeral home could only do so much, after all. But he did the right thing.

Didn’t he?

Everyone had said so the day I agreed to turn off Matt’s life support. Even his closest friend had said so when he stood to deliver Matt’s eulogy in the sanctuary of the ransacked church which stood a hundred yards below. He did the right thing. He was a good person. He took the beating like he was supposed to.   

An image rose unbidden before my mind’s eye: Matt lying still in that ICU bed, surrounded by beeping machines, most of his swollen face obscured by white bandages that held his battered flesh in place. One of his assailants had cut him with a pocket knife; the other had bludgeoned him about the skull with a metal baseball bat. But Matt didn’t fight back. He’d made a mistake at first; he thought he could protect Mr. Jefferson’s drug store. But in the end, he recognized his error, and he did his duty. He put down his gun — and he submitted. Because he knew what was just, the sweet boy.

Someone pushed a packet of tissues into my right hand, and I realized - with a twinge of horror - that my face was wet. Dear God, what’s wrong with me? Matt did the right thing! I’d spent the entire day mentally repeating this like a mantra, yet my white woman’s tears still came just the same. I thought I had done the work, but I was still a manipulative monster. I was still centering my own selfish, privileged desires. I was still refusing to accept this balancing of the scales. But our kind must be held accountable. We are the reason much is wrong with the world.

The pastor spoke. The coffin was lowered into the freshly-dug pit. Flowers and dirt were scattered atop its glistening lid. And presently, the small crowd faded away, leaving me alone to watch black smoke rise from Main Street — and contemplate my reckoning.

End.

The Best Laid Schemes (PG)

This is a piece of flash fiction that hit me like a bolt from the blue. It's angry, it's pointed, and it's not subtle at all, but I had to get it out of my head before returning to my larger, more ambitious works in progress. Hope you enjoy!

*****

Jason Michael Barrett was the safest man in the world — and had mere hours left to live.

Jason, alas, was unaware of the nearness of his demise. But in fairness to our hapless main character, no one had ever thought to look for the congenital weakness in that vessel at the base of his brain. After all, as far as Jason knew, he was perfectly healthy. How could he be anything else when he was so fastidious — so responsible?

Hefting himself from his desk chair, Jason walked over to a sterile cabinet situated by his front door and tapped its keypad. After a series of clicks and buzzes, the bottom drawer opened with a hiss, revealing the single-use protective gear he always donned before stepping outside.

Normally, Jason would spend the entirety of his day - as he spent most of his days - ensconced inside his first floor condominium, parked in front of the computer on which he penned his prize-winning columns for the Journal. But he’d just received a notification on his desktop that his grocery order for the week was sitting on his stoop — and unfortunately, that necessitated a short trip beyond his front door.