Written with the prompts: a game you see, celebrate, shut it down, pleasure, beans for dinner, friends of friends, especially the pants, jumped into Gary’s lap, if you start now, this old lamp, stranger with no hat, she had two sons, good girl with bad habits, as the door opened she knew, Mommy’s candy, green bird in winter, one more chance, peanut butter, fresh laundry, 100 days
As the door opened Marty knew she would be spending the better part of the evening doing laundry. Jamie’s clothes were covered with mud and grass stains, but especially his pants—and oh, God, not those pants! How did he get by her this morning wearing his church pants? If you start now, she told herself, glancing at the clock on the microwave oven, oh jeez. Luckily she already had a pot of beans simmering for dinner, so she could, if she hurried, get this load finished before bedtime.
“Get out of those clothes,” she told Jamie. “You too,” she told Gary. To be fair, Gary actually looked neat and clean as a pin, but if she was going to get a load in the washer, she was going to make it worth her while.
Marty sighed as she rushed both boys toward the bedroom. “Put on your play clothes. Denim, okay?” They didn’t give her any guff and she could roll with it all. Life with two sons: it’s all a game, you see.
The washer humming, the boys settled under the old lamp in the study reading Goosebumps novels, she served them peanut butter on celery for an afternoon snack. Soon it was time to shift the clothes to the dryer, and finally she could huddle at the banquette table in the kitchen, doodling in her notebook, imagining she lived on a planet with two suns, a place where the light is always trickling through lace curtains, 24/7, and everyone wore wide-brimmed hats whenever they went outside. Then there would come a stranger without a hat, a woman who couldn’t get enough of the light and the heat, a woman who had mysteriously appeared from a planet with heavy cloud cover and fog. That would be her, that would be Marty, a good girl with a bad habit of indulging in impossible fantasies, a woman who dreams of escape. Could she have on more chance? She had lost so many already.
She heard her boys squealing in the study, something about Fredo the dog jumping into Gary’s lap, leaving Jamie bereft and lonely. She used to leap into the fray, shutting down every one of their tiffs, but she knew now to let them figure it out on their own. She learned that one by watching friends of friends messing up with their own kids. Oh, damn, really– we’re all just amateurs.
She stirred the bean soup, checked the clock again, still an hour before dinner time. She was tempted to dive into a taste of her own “Mommy’s only” candy, the few gummies the boys’ father left her when he went on the road. He’d be gone 100 days, he told her, give or take an hour or two. Maybe he’d bring more of this brand of candy back with him, but she kinda hoped he wouldn’t. She spread peanut butter on a sliced apple instead.
She had nothing to celebrate, but these few moments of quiet were a true pleasure. Out the window, white camellias bloomed, attracting green birds in winter. The smell of fresh laundry wafted in through the kitchen door.
Photo by Engin Akyurt
