On Short
Fiction
I am fortunate to have a former colleague and dear friend
willing to ask, “What’s up with the endings?” as she read some of these
selections.
Mad or not, a particular method under-girds this collection of
short fiction—often very short. Were I a visual artist I would be inclined by
temperament to sketch, to paint miniatures, to experiment.
The deliberate use of the word fictions is to avoid the term story.
For me, plot is one framing device, which may or may not be significant to a
piece.
Or perhaps my declining attention span is more to the point
than any refined aesthetic.
What I hope is readers may be surprised at times, uncertain at
times, or comforted, or moved, or disgusted as they will while easing through
my work.
I only half-jokingly recommend reading no more than one
selection a day.
Thank you in advance. sk
Meal
Plan
This kind of thinking comes to me sometimes when I am
cooking up a meal for myself. Today, while fixing my lunch—about an hour later
than usual—my mind started to put the pieces together. I thought about fixing
lunches for Francine and her two kids.
Started up when I pushed my thumb through the plastic
wrap on three peppers. They were packaged in a row like traffic light colors. I
thought about her kids first—their lunches. Fixing lunches for them. What the
other kids would say.
Little Sally, opening up her Ariel lunch box, taking out
the bowl, carrying it over to the microwave on the other side of the cafeteria.
One of her little girlfriends, looking up from her chicken rings and fries,
asking, “Wacha got in there?”
I like to take my thumb and pry out a section of a
pepper. Kind of uneven sometimes, but I don’t mind. Then I take the Misono
knife my niece gave me—she thinks since I am a civil servant and don’t have any
kind of personal retirement plan that I must need a two hundred dollar knife.
She gives me a new knife each birthday. Funny thing is, my knives are better
than hers by far. I slice up the segments from each pepper and push them to the
side on the cutting board.
In the eight-inch skillet, the oil is getting pretty hot,
so I scrape up the chopped onion off the cutting board and then push it off the
blade with my finger into the oil. Two thin slices of pre-cooked ham are diced
and tossed in as well.
Sometimes when I am cooking, I imagine that I am back in
the kitchen with Francine—her kitchen—and while something she is preparing is
simmering or in the oven, she and I slow dance, maybe to something like some
Coltrane ballad, or maybe Coltrane and Hartman. In my mind, she is giggling and
then breaks away with a laugh because maybe the lasagna needs to come out.
I check the eight pre-peeled frozen shrimp that are in
the colander in the sink. I let some warm water run over them. Sometimes I
think about just standing behind Francine when she is cooking, up close,
pressing against her, pulling her hair to the side, kissing her on the neck.
The she holds up a wooden spoon with some sauce on it—she has to make her own
from scratch—and asks me to taste. Mmmm, I always respond. Good, I say.
Francine hasn’t spoken to me in three weeks. What
happened was she told me she had a really hard day and when she poured the
third glass of wine for herself, I asked her if she really needed another one.
She told me not to ever mention anything about having a drink ever again. I was
thinking about my brother, an uncle, two good friends who all had two or three
at a time until it became five or six. Every single day. I didn’t tell her any
of that. I just apologized, but it was half-hearted. And she could tell. We
didn’t kiss when I left that night right after dinner. The kids had homework,
she said.
Maybe Francine would be sitting in the lunch room at the
medical center where she works and one of her work buddies would lean in a bit
and catch a whiff of her lunch and ask, “Did Steve really make that for you?” Francine
is a pediatric nurse.
Sometimes I think about when she is at the sliding glass
door watching my dog chase after squirrels running the fences and how I would
lift her hair up from her neck and there would always be some stray little
strands that I couldn’t catch, and when I kissed her there, she would say,
“Mmmm, that’s nice.”
When the onions and the diced ham seem pretty much cooked
through, I toss in the peppers and the shrimp and add half a cup of chicken
broth and put a lid over the skillet. It really goes to a saucepan, but I
dropped the skillet lid once and it bent so badly that it lets the steam out.
Francine is great to dance with. She lets her head really
rest up against my chest and she hums along with the music and we can just turn
in a slow tight circle in the kitchen seems like forever.
Once the shrimp are pink, I add a third of a cup of
Spanish rice I cooked up two nights ago. I always have a pot of rice to work
from. Francine’s son Evan would pick out the shrimp and give them to a pal of
his. “Take these,” he will say. “Really?” his friend will say. ”You don’t eat
the shrimp?” Maybe Evan will trade them for an extra peanut butter cookie or
some fries.
Two days ago I sent Francine a text message wishing Sally
a happy 7th birthday. No reply yet. Of course, I know she was
insulted. Wasn’t the first time I mentioned it—but I think in her heart she
knows I’m not picking, I’m just worried.
A couple of dashes of Tobasco and my lunch is ready. And
it’s good, really, really good.
Ladson
2013
