Glass #FlashFiction

There was a shard of glass on the top staircase where I used to sit and tie my shoes every morning before school. Mother had warned me that you could never clean up broken glass with a broom and dustpan. You needed a vacuum, a Hoover in her days. Now I used the Dyson she bought me last Christmas. But there was something about that shard of glass on the steps that made me not want to pick it up. Maybe I enjoyed perseverating on memories as I settled into my parents’ house, my inheritance, with a strange mix of guilt and justice. I stared at the shard for a moment longer, appreciating the rainbow colors that reflected in the odd angle cuts. Then, I walked out to the glass room, the room of all windows at the end of the house.  

I sat in the rocking chair, the rocking chair where I remembered my dad sitting last year, sitting and listening to Chicago while he told me about RGIII being the hope for the Redskins, that this was going to be their year. He had said the same thing about another rookie bringing back the Redskins the year before. Sitting in my dad’s place now, I looked at the chair where I had sat last year, turned around with my knees pushing in to the cushion. I thought about the fact that I had no one to yell at when they dug their knees into my couch cushions. I thought about the fact that I had no one to listen to my stories and eat my food. I thought about the fact that my dad had never gotten to hold a grandchild, and that I wanted nothing more in that moment than for him to see me as a mother with a beautiful baby on my hip. I wanted nothing more than for him to wrap his loving arms around both of us. But we couldn’t do those things now. I couldn’t live my life on regrets.

I was walking in the park, and I saw a boy running around with no shoelaces. The tongues of his red shoes were flapping around as he chased around no one in particular, maybe an imaginary friend. He didn’t care that he had no shoelaces. He didn’t care that he was by himself. His smile was broad, and his movements were carefree. I walked up to the boy and told him that his shoelaces were untied. He looked at me and laughed before shyly ducking his blonde head and running to his mother knitting on a park bench.

I walked on. I noticed a bottle ahead in the distance, a large one that looked like a large fat cylinder on top of a short skinny one. I imagined someone had been drinking iced tea out of it on the day before, a warm spring day. I walked up to the bottle and nudged it with my foot. I picked it up and moved to throw it in the trashcan, but then the thought of recycling popped into my head. Guilt made me hang on to the bottle. I passed another trashcan, but no recycling bin. I saw the boy with no shoelaces again, flying a kite with his mother. I kept walking and not seeing recycling bins, so I knew I was at a crossroads. Keep looking, possibly in vain, or go home where recycling bins were plentiful? I decided to walk home.

I had the bottle in my hand when I pulled open the sliding glass door to the window room. I saw you sitting in the rocking chair, seemingly alone, but, like the child, you didn’t care. Were you there with your imaginary friends? Were they walking backwards, causing mischief, and generally helping you to retreat from a world that could level us with its boredom? No, you were just staring, but then you spoke. I still had the bottle in my hands. You told me that our marriage wasn’t working for you. I asked if there was someone else. You told me no, but I could read the subtexts that had been piling up. I folded a woman’s black T-shirt from the Gap. I didn’t own any black T-shirts. I found a black, lacy G-string inside of one of your shoes. I definitely didn’t own any G-strings. I thought about all of this, but I said nothing. I lost my parents a month ago, but I had lost you long before that. I thought about the complicated pretense, the strict, anxious, and depressing life I had lived to hold everything together when it felt like my world was crumbling around me, and I would be very much alone. I thought about the simplicity of a black T-shirt and a black thong. I wanted that simplicity. I deserved it. You had taken it from me. I threw the bottle, but not at you, I threw it across the room. It was a warning signal. A sign for you to take your shit and leave.

But you didn’t get it. You got up from the rocking chair and tried to hug me; like there was something worthwhile you had to give me. All I could do was to tell you to leave. You cleaned up the broken glass, all except that one piece that you missed on the staircase. You packed your things and left, and, when you were finally gone, I let the emptiness and the loneliness flow over me. I sat in that rocking chair and wrapped the blue and gray diamond patterned blanket around my shoulders. Tears streamed down my face, but I didn’t sob. It was a cry of relief. I could hear my own thoughts again.

I looked out of one of the windows and saw a squirrel scampering from the tree to the deck and back again. I thought back to the time when I was a child and we had to raise two baby squirrels that had been abandoned by their mother. We bottle-fed them. One of the squirrels thrived. Her name was Buttercup. We released her to the wild when she was big enough. I wondered if the squirrel I saw could have been Buttercup. I thought about children who were separated from their parents at birth. I thought about the mothers who said they would always recognize their own child. I wondered if it was true. I walked up to the glass. I could see myself in it. I could see my mother in there too.

*This story was selected as a Top 25 Finalist for Glimmer Train's 2014 Very Short Fiction Contest. See the list of all finalists here: http://bit.ly/14AprVSFtop25.