A Stab at Fiction
*** I'm new to fiction. Haven't written much of anything in the fiction department since I tried to recreate Sweet Valley High in the sixth grade, but I took a class this quarter and I'm giving it a shot. I struggled at first to pull ideas out of nowhere, but my professor said I was looking at it the wrong way. He told me to take things I knew and mold them exactly how I wanted them to be. So here are a couple of "fictional" scenes with the endings that I wish echoed reality.
Scene 1: The Bookstore
Leah uses her shoulder to push open the door, keeping her hands wedged in her pockets to avoid the door handle. She glances around the book store and notices that most people were considerate enough to don masks, but a few assholes had decided it was beneath them, so she’d just avoid them more diligently. She takes long strides as she heads to the travel section, and then takes a deep breath to inhale the scent of books. She had missed book stores intensely, and yes she could have ordered books off Amazon, but she has a soul and no way in hell was Jeff Bezos going to get any of her fucking money.
She finds a paperback on a man’s bike trip through South America and another woman’s year in France and grabs them both, but she decides to stop by a fiction aisle to peruse for a moment. She usually prefers memoir and the grittiness of real life, but every once in a while she feels the need to indulge in fantasy. She pulls a pulpy thriller off the shelf and skims the back until her eyes dart across the aisle as she hears a child’s wail. Leah adjusts her mask and watches a little girl of about three holding a stuffed animal from the show Paw Patrol and pleading with her mother. “I need Rocky! I want him,” the child yells.
Leah rolls her eyes. It didn’t make any sense to her that a bookstore had a toy section, small as it was, or why people felt the need to bring children to an adult place of quiet and literature. If they wanted toys, they could march their asses over to Target with all the other screeching children and middle aged moms who seemed to live for that shit. Secondly, she had watched this Paw Patrol show with her nephew and even she knew that Rocky was a bullshit character. This kid should be asking for Marshall or Chase, or be a goddamn feminist and pick Skye, the token female of the bunch.
Leah continues scanning the back of the book, but her eyes continually wander over to the mom and child as the girl’s wails begin to escalate. The mom, Leah notes, is a walking cliché. She’s got it all: the yoga pants, the messy bun, the considerable baby weight she has yet to lose, and she’s schlepping a large tote bag brimming with who knows what. The mom stands tall as she attempts to reason with her daughter. “I know you would like the Rocky doll, but that’s not what we’re here for,” she says, her voice calm but teetering with impatience.
The little girl’s dark brown curls need a brushing and her pants have stains on the back. Under normal circumstances, the kid might be kind of cute, but she’s less cute as her fists clench and she shrieks, “Rocky! Rocky! Rocky! He’s mine!” Lydia can’t even be bothered to pretend she’s looking for books anymore and watches with her mouth slightly agape and her eyebrows furrowing.
The littler girl now melts into a toddler shaped puddle on the floor, crying out in guttural sobs as mom lets out a desperate sigh and bends over to scoop her up off the floor. Leah watches as the little girl’s body goes rigid and her feet start flutter kicking and mom is dodging kicks as she peels her child off the gray carpet. Lydia looks around and sees a few other customers watching this dismal excuse at parenting and she can’t help herself anymore and marches over to the mother, careful to keep six feet between them. “Do you need help?” she asks as she raises her voice to be heard over the child.
The mom looks from her daughter up at Leah with tired eyes and says, “No, thanks. It’s just one of those days where she didn’t get a nap and everything is the end of the world.”
“That sucks. I’m sorry you’re struggling. Maybe this is one of those times where you don’t bring your kid in public then,” Leah says as she cocks her head and purses her lips together beneath her mask.
The daughter is now distracted by this exchange and her cries dissolve into shuddering sighs. Mom’s chin juts out and she pulls her daughter upright and hoists her onto her hip and says, “You know what? You’re probably right. It wasn’t a great day to take her out, but I needed to get out of the house for half an hour and maybe pick up a book that isn’t about a dog or a rabbit. I’m just doing my best here.”
“Look, I get it. Life is hard right now, none of us are getting out much, which means when we do get out, we want to enjoy our experience too. Maybe you should think about other people.”
Mom winces and delicately sets Rocky back on the shelf and strokes her daughter’s back as the little girl’s breathing slows to a normal rhythm. Leah can’t see the lower half of her face, but mom’s eyes narrow in a harsh squint. “My sincerest apologies that you were inconvenienced for two and a half minutes. Thank goodness for people like you who remind us all what it takes to be a good person. You have kids?”
“God, no,” Leah says with a mock shudder.
“Yeah, the best mothers never do.” And mom grabs the tote bag with her free hand and walks toward the exit. Leah scoffs and takes her purchases to the cashier. What a bitch. Some people are so inconsiderate.
Scene 2: The Neighbor
The kids giggle in the front yard as they make sweeping circles with sidewalk chalk and proudly display their round tummies, darting in and out of the sprinklers. Noticing they are momentarily distracted, Brooke takes this opportunity to grab shears from the garage and prune the roses lining her driveway. When she planted them four years ago, she only had one child to keep track of and could afford to meticulously tend to them, but that’s no longer her reality. Grass shoots up through the bushes and spiny branches sprawl in all directions. Dead buds droop amidst the fresh blossoms, and Brooke slides worn gardening gloves over her fingers to grab hold of the stems and snip the lifeless, brown remnants.
She usually thinks about the roses as she’s buckling kids into their car seats and she twinges with embarrassment when she looks at them and then glances around at the rest of the neighborhood’s manicured lawns. Every time she swears to herself that she’ll get to them after work, but who is she kidding? A working mom with two kids means yard work will never rise to the top of her priority list. Not that it matters to her all that much. It would be nice, but if it really bothers her neighbors that much, they were welcome to come on over and prune the yard themselves.
As Brooke fumbles with the dead blossoms and chucks them into a pile in the driveway, she hears the gravely nasal pitch of her neighbor’s voice and instantly stands up straight and juts her jaw forward. She inhales sharply and tightens her grip on her pruning shears. The smell of cigarette smoke precedes Margaret as she saunters down the sidewalk. “So nice to see you out here! I was wondering how long it would take for you to get to those," she says.
Brooke purses her lips in an attempt at a smile, but her mouth falls short and lands in a grimace. She tosses the shears down and folds her arms tightly over her chest. She doesn’t have time for this today, and she knows exactly what passive aggressive slights will be lobbed her way under the guise of “neighborly advice.” Margaret has offered her helpful comments on a regular basis since the day they moved in, moving truck and all. That first Brooke and her family had pulled up to their new home, boxes in their arms, a toddler trailing behind them, Margaret had popped by to introduce herself. She then let Brooke know that the clovers had never been this high before, and did Brooke know the previous owner had installed a sprinkler system to make watering the grass easier? Brooke and her husband James could not decipher whether or not she was being serious as they chuckled and made jokes about not knowing where their underwear, let alone their lawn mower might be. The coming weeks, months, and years would reveal that Margaret had not been joking. Neighbor relations continued to steadily decline since then.
Margaret would traipse down the road with cookies and odds and ends for the kids and then politely berate Brooke’s gardening skills or lack thereof. She always came armed with a suggestion, a critique, an inquiry about what had taken Brooke so long to get to the weeding? Brooke’s personal favorite was just weeks after bringing her second child home from the hospital. Fresh out of a shower, a rare treat for a mother of a newborn, Brooke heard a continuous stream of knocking and hastily tied her robe around her as she rushed down the stairs before this asshole woke up the baby. She opened the door to Margaret, smoking a cigarette and holding a gift bag in one hand. Brooke had thanked her and tried to hurry her along as nap time was the only moment of freedom in her day. Margaret left only after offering helpful at-home remedies for pinning back her baby boy's large ears. After shutting the door, Brooke peered in the bag and found a onesie, a wind chime, and an article detailing how planting garlic could eliminate the black spots on roses.
Brooke now stands up taller and arches her back as Margaret launches into her commentary about how the roses would be blooming so much better if Brooke had bothered to trim back the stalks in the fall. And while she can usually roll her eyes, shrug it off or laugh about it, Brooke can’t do it. Not today. Not with all the fucking tragedy in the world right now. People are sick and can’t afford housing and food because of the pandemic, black people are being murdered in the street by police officers, and Margaret wants to give her shit because she hasn’t thoroughly trimmed her flowers? Not today.
“…And if you just clip here it won’t look so –"
“Margaret, I don’t have time to talk roses right now,” Brooke says and then yells, “Come on kids, let’s go inside and get a popsicle.”
“But, Brooke, I was just...” Margaret trails off, and Brooke doesn’t bother responding as she takes one kid by the hand, hoists a toddler onto her hip and marches inside.