Fourth Annual Wild Violet Writing Contest Winners (2006)
Fiction
— Second Place
Kimberly Younkin's short nonfiction work has appeared in the anthology A Cup of Comfort for Mothers to Be and her essays on several webzines. She writes a monthly column for Columbus Parent magazine and grows her cache of unfinished short stories as time permits.
The
Death and Life of Impressions
By Kimberly Younkin
Perched at the edge of the sandbox, digging holes with her last-born son
under bright sun that cuts through the autumn chill, she’s unaware
of endings.
The playground is deserted. She and Chase play contentedly, ankle-deep, in a reprieve from the chaos of life with five others. Chase talks sweet toddler talk, and she listens, fully. “Mommy, did you know some dinosaurs have bony plates on their backs? They are called Steggo-sorrusses.”
She smiles, relishing his pronunciation. “That’s my smart little man.”
Chase nods. “I know how garbage trucks smash trash with a big smasher thing in the back.” He demonstrates, punching hills of sand with his fat fist, yelling “POW!” with each blow.
Even in her reverie, she hears him coming, his voice booming across the playground. Happy Dad.
“Come on, Kylie! Let’s go, Brendan! Let’s get to playing!”
She looks up to see three people bounding toward the playground — him, short and stout with shoulder-length pink-blond hair shorn over his ears and thick eyeglasses; his preschool-age children perfect replicas of him, junior boy and girl versions. They all wear the same amusement park T-shirts, creases up the middle and across the chest from sitting folded on a kiosk shelf all summer. She imagines they bought them yesterday after late-season roller coaster rides and ice cream; that they bolted from bed today, scrambling for their new shirts as if they beckoned, brightly wrapped, from under a Christmas tree.
She’s seen him before, dreads him. He talks loudly, whoops and snorts when he laughs, and tosses his kids in the air — so fiercely one hopes they’re not fresh from a meal — like he’s trying to prove he’s the perfect father. Each time he addresses his kids, he calls them by name, so the whole playground hears “Kylie” and “Brendan” (names that, because of his overuse, she’s grown to hate) at least sixty times while he’s there. Always after he arrives, she can scarcely hear the play talk of her own children, hardly hear herself think, because this man, thirty feet away, is so Happy.
Instead of smiling as he nears and offering, “Nice day, isn’t it?” she turns back to her son, picks up his toy shovel, and stabs sharply at the sand.
Loud words fill the air. “Who’s first down the slide? BRENDAN! Come on, big man! You can do it!” he yells.
She seethes. Chase punches sand hills, unfazed. “POW-POW! Mommy, POW!”
“Okay, Kylie, GO GET ‘IM! Show ‘im who’s boss!”
She withstands it for twenty minutes, feels it’s hours — feels her annoyance and frustration that Chase has to shout above the din, boil.
“Let’s go, honey,” she says, exhaling hard, angrily stuffing sand toys into Chase’s backpack. She stands and brushes herself off, then reaches her hand to her boy. “Let’s head back and have a snack before the troops get home.”
By the time Chase wheedles and stalls, Happy Dad grabs his kids and trots off, whistling and chirping as he packs them into the car. Since he’s in the parking lot, she drops the bag, hoping to salvage some more quiet time and feeling slightly triumphant — hoping he read her mind and saw that she couldn’t stand him.
She watches him jog around the car, fling open the driver’s side door. As he does, something pops from the door pocket to the ground. Still miffed about his histrionics, she makes no move to signal that he’s left something behind. Instead, she waits until they’re gone, and she and Chase leave by the same path. She glances around quickly and walks to the object, wondering if she should leave it, or maybe drive over it with her car.
She picks it up and finds that it’s a full pill bottle from a nearby pharmacy, sees that it’s a prescription for a “P. Harrington” for “Tamoxifen.” She takes it home, thinking she may stop hating him enough to return it later.
That evening, as she wipes clean the dinner dishes her husband washes, she asks him, “Do you know what the drug ‘Tamoxifen’ is for?”
He thinks a moment and says, “I just heard that name on the news the other night. Hmmm. What was that about?” He scratches his head with the sponge, leaving soap bubbles on his temple. “Oh yeah, I think they said it was some new drug to treat cancer.”
“Oh.” She dries a dish, lays down the towel. “I’ll be back in a minute. Bathroom.”
She gets there, barely before the tears come, and closes the door behind her. She cries silently, hard tears of shame, sitting on the toilet seat with her head in her hands until someone calls her name from another room.
The next morning she sends her big kids off to school, kissing their cheeks without meeting their eyes, for fear they’ll see her transgression. Then she busies Chase with some beginner scissors and scrap paper and consciously puts off her task for a few moments, watching him work intently at wedging his pudgy finger and thumb in the handle holes. She wishes to trade places with him, longs to make artwork instead of amends.
Eventually she picks up the phone and dials the phone number on the pill bottle, hoping he won’t be home, but he answers in a cheery voice, of course.
“Hello!”
She opens her mouth, feels warmth rise up her neck and says, “Hi. You don’t know me, but my name’s Amy Loeffler. I found something that’s yours.” She explains what happened, how she came to be holding his pills.
“Yes. I saw you and a little boy playing in the sandbox while we were there.” She hears him smile. “You both seemed pretty happy.”
“I was with my son.” She closes her eyes and curls her fists and hates herself, then asks if they can meet.
“Well, it’s another beautiful day, and we’re heading to the park again. Will you be there? Maybe the kids can play together.”
She thinks, Do you feel well enough to do that? But because he’ll know she pried, she says, instead, “Yes. We’ll be there. A play date sounds nice.” She wonders if she’ll mean that, later.
“See you in an hour, Mr. Harrington.”
“Please,
Amy,” he says. “Call me Steven.”
