Boulders- Draft 1

I submitted the following short story as my "Short Story 1" assignment for my fiction writing class this past fall semester.

My class and I work shopped it and I will link the edited version that I submitted as my final below.

Please enjoy the development that happened between the two versions!

Draft 2

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BOULDERS

Some people call me the product of a broken home. To me, it was just home. There was Mom’s house. There was Dad’s house. 1st, 3rd, and 5th weekend drop offs in the middle. One month a summer. Alternating holidays. It was all normal in my eyes. Explaining the dynamics of it to kids who didn’t understand became second nature along with riding a bike, swimming, and the words to the Pledge of Allegiance. Though, I can still recite the reasoning Mom gave me whenever I asked her why she left Dad better than I can the Pledge.

“It’s just...” She would always pause and let out a sigh, shaking her head. She would throw up her hands in the dramatic manner she always did and then bring them down, clasping them at her chest like she was trying to hold onto a floating balloon. “It just didn’t work out. We just didn’t agree on a lot of things—it’s better off this way.”

As the years wore on, the reasoning stayed the same and I eventually quit asking, I had heard the record replay enough. I thought, “Maybe this will be my life’s great mystery: Why Mom left Dad.”

20-some-odd years, a bachelor's degree, and three Toyota's later, she revealed to me the truth. Which, to some extent, was what she had been telling me for all those years. Disagreements led to the end of their marriage.

“Do you think she’ll like it?” I asked Mom that night, sliding a wooden ring box across the tiled patio table. A cold front had just grasped the edges of our city the day prior and for the first time in months, the thick summer air was pushed out and we were able to sit outside in sweaters and not boil to death or be swarmed by nagging mosquitos.

I wore a sweatshirt Dad bought me my first year at college, the orange was faded to the color of a morning sunrise and I had cut holes in the worn cuffs so my thumbs could poke through. Mom wore a sweatshirt that she always wore even when the weather didn’t permit it. Tea and ink stains dotted the pilled sleeves and the fleece on the inside was rough and scratchy.

She examined the ring, her eyes glued to diamonds that glowed amber under the candle light with hands pulled snug in her sleeves.

Mom shifted in her seat. “I thought you said that she didn’t want kids.”

“Yeah, well, we can work on that.”

“Love,” she snapped the ring box close and pushed it back to me. “that’s not something you work on. If she doesn't want kids and you do, it’s not going to work out.”

“It’s not a big deal. We can make it work.”

“No, you can’t. Not without one of you sacrificing something. ”

“Isn’t that what marriage is, though, sacrifice?”

She reached for her imaginary balloon, but only found the flaking screen printed graphics on her sweatshirt. Barely legible. “Sacrifice when it comes to the trivial things like where you go out to eat and what movie you see, not sacrificing your lifelong happiness because you and your partner have different opinions on something major like children.”

“Is that why you left Dad?” The words tumbled from my lips like a boulder. If they were physical, they would have cracked the table top.

“What?”

“Why you left Dad. Did you not want children? Did you not want me?”

“I wanted you, I still do. I always will.” Mom pulled back into her sweatshirt.

“What was it then?”

“It was your dad.” Boulder. “I didn’t want to have any more children with a man who got drunk just to pick fights with me.” Boulder.

“Dad doesn’t drink.” “He used to.” Boulder.

I remained quiet and picked at a hangnail on my ring finger.

“How could I be married to someone whose moral beliefs differed so greatly from mine? How would I be able to pass my own beliefs on to you if I was constantly getting yelled at and ridiculed for having them?” She shook her head, “And I’m not saying that not wanting to have kids is bad. And I’m not saying that wanting to have kids is good. I’m just saying that’s not something you want to bend on. You might not be happy in life if you don’t have kids. She might not be happy if she does have kids. You both don’t want to take that chance. And the topic of children could just be a catalyst for even bigger differences and problems.”

She sunk back into the cushion on her chair and said, “It’s something that I’ve thought a lot about over the past few years.” Pebbles.

A bracing breeze whipped down from the north and extinguished the candle on the table where the boulders lay next to the small ring box on broken tiles and my life’s great mystery.

_______________

Mom was always this endless candle of light—until she wasn’t. She’d start flickering away until her flame turned to smoke. She’d smoulder and brood and it would be hard to reignite her.

I could always tell the state of her flame by her nails. When she was good, she was great and she’d tap her long polished nails on the table while deep in thought, shooting her body up to take action on her newest project, often juggling more than one at the same time. She’d dig into her Anthony Bourdaine cookbooks and plan a meal with dishes from three or four different continents. Appetizers through desserts. Prepping vegetables through washing the final dishes. The whole damn process that just screamed happiness.

When her flame was gone, she would obsessively chew and pick and tear away her nails until they bled at the cuticles. She’d put on a faint happy face while I was around, but would always end up locking herself away in her office at night. She knew when she was bad, too, and would try to spark happiness in any way she could, try to hold on with broken nails a little bit longer. The things she loved to do would sit around here like tombstones for her creativity and the enthusiasm for life that had left her with no rhyme or reason. A painting where she only managed the energy to put down the base coat. A story where she only wrote a single line. A meal she would make and not even eat.

One morning, I saw her on the back patio on her knees, forehead on the cracked terracotta floor tiles, trusty sweatshirt rolled up into a ball and pressed against her stomach. Sobbing. Hysterically sobbing. Short gasping breaths choked out by tears. She murmured something over and over that I couldn’t make out. Some prayer in a language long forgotten except by those who were as broken as the tiles.

She threw her head back and stared into the blinding blue sky with her tear battered eyes. It seemed to me that my mother, who had always lived a secular life, was waiting on something or someone from an ethereal plane of existence. An angel to come down and pat her on the back. A sign to tell her that it would be alright. No angels came now, no signs appeared before her. She closed her eyes once more, lips whispering another prayer that only her mind could hear, and picked herself up from the floor.

Later that day, she came home with a bunch of overripe bananas that she bought on discount at the supermarket and a coffee mug with my future university's mascot on it. She made banana bread with peanut butter and chocolate chips. Sea salt sprinkled on top. Served with tea.

I asked her if she wanted to watch a movie. “Maybe that one about love and the British guy who travels through time?”

“No thanks, Love,” she pulled her sweatshirt over her head, yanking her hair out from the collar. “I think I’m just going to go to bed. Love you.”

I thanked her for the mug filled with tea and the banana bread and wanted to tell her that it was going to be alright, but the words caught in my throat. “Love you, too, Mom.”

_______________

When I was younger, I could never understand why she was the way she was. As I held back the urge to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, I would think to myself, “Just stop. Just stop being sad.” I couldn’t understand any of it. It wasn’t something the animated characters talked about in my cartoons, we didn’t discuss at school. Everything in my mind was so surface level at the time, I didn’t have the knowledge or life experience to dig any deeper. I thought of crying as something she could just turn off. “You’re an adult, just stop it. Please.”

Now that I’m an adult, I still don’t understand. I don’t understand why I get sad for seemingly no reason. I don’t understand why I can’t find the off switch. I chew my nails to battle my sadness. I tug on my faded sweatshirt and drink from my chipped mug and wait for my flame to ignite.

I look at my own children and wonder if I will ever tell them the answer to their lives greatest mystery: “Why Mom left Dad.” I know Mom had looked at me like that. Maybe I’ll even take it a step further and tell them that they could have just not existed if I had listened to their grandmother's advice. Boulder after boulder.

In my misunderstandings, I seem to understand her better. I don’t think she was ever broken, just hand painted terracotta set amongst linoleum.