Tag Archives: parenthood

The Bottom Shelf

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The first Ficly that I’m posting from school. This one is about a man who, with his new wife, runs into an old girlfriend in a pharmacy.

I had told her in no uncertain terms that marriage wasn’t for me. I remember her smiling weakly, and within two weeks the relationship had petered off to a sort of simmering hatred. Before one of us could explode, we split ways.

I hadn’t seen her for three or four years when I saw her in the pharmacy. I was with my wife, trying to decide which brand of diaper was best for an infant. Had I been the one to notice her first, I would have just ignored her. She looked at me with pursed lips from the other end of the aisle. My wife didn’t notice.

I caught her eye by accident, and we were locked there. I couldn’t avoid her gaze. She didn’t say anything. It wasn’t until my wife, ten months pregnant, pointed at something on the bottom shelf, that I was able to finally turn away. I moved to look at what she was talking about. There was a poorly packaged store brand that looked more like a Maxi-pad than a diaper. I crouched down to pick it up, focused on the label for a minute, and heard a familiar voice behind me.

“Can I help you folks?”

My wife turned and looked at her, smiling. I was still crouching on the floor, confused, feeling compressed by these two titans of the other sex. She bent down next to me and picked up a cheap pack of leak-proof Pampers.

She handed them to my wife and pointed to a toddler who just wandered in with a tall man who looked like his father.

“I used these with him when he was a baby. Congratulations!” She grinned ear to ear like she’d won some kind of contest, and walked away.

In the wake of her presence, I looked up at my wife. She asked me what I was still doing on the floor. I shook my head and stood. When I looked back to the child, the father, and woman who knew about diapers, they were gone, like they had never been.

“Diapers. Anything else?”

“No,” I said, and walked around to the back of the overflowing cart.

“Come on then,” she said, “I can’t wait to get out of here.”

I nodded, “Yep.”

Originally on Ficly:

Part One: http://ficly.com/stories/16997

Part Two: http://ficly.com/stories/16999

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The Next Generation Will Be Better

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A longer piece the size of a three part Ficly about two parents and their odd daughter, who is more, or less, than she seems.

Janet plays with her toys on the carpet in the living room. There’s another girl here to play. One of Janet’s few friends. So many of her friends seem to outgrow her after a year or two. She’s young. Maybe things will change, I don’t know. I hand the girls a muffin each, like it’s the last thing I’ll ever give Janet. So small, so fragile. They keep sliding the dolls around the floor, trying to figure out what to do with them.

Janet smiles up at me, grinning through her missing front teeth. She is six years old. That’s what they told us at the Adoption Center. We’ve had her maybe four years now, instead of our own, the one we couldn’t have. She hasn’t grown any in all these years, even though I can feel my youth slipping away.

Nicole calls her in to the bedroom. Nicole didn’t get out of bed today. Today is the day the contract runs out.

Janet scampers over, leaving the other girl to sit by the couch staring dully towards where Janet escaped her vision around the corner. She doesn’t look at me.

Kids.

I hear Nicole crying and I leave the other child to go stand by the door to the dark bedroom. The silhouette of Nicole sits up and hoists Janet onto her lap and holds her. Janet looks stoic, but returns the hug.

She doesn’t understand, not really. Maybe she doesn’t care. It makes me angry, but not at her– the people who made her. They abandoned this thing so that Nicole and I might come along and take it into our home. No one could be prepared for a day like this.

There’s an official, authoritative knock on the door. I go to answer it and three men in suits stand there invasively, but they mean no harm.

“Hi there!” He shakes my hand firmly, with a mechanical grip. “You must be Mr. Roots. Is Janet here?”

I hear Nicole whimper. I nod and sigh. The man smiles and taps me on the shoulder.

“It’ll be alright. Everyone gets over these models eventually. The next generation will be better.”

I stare at his mouth. I wish it was easier to tell if this guy were real or not. I listen but, no whirring of gears, nothing.

Janet steps out from the room and looks at the men by the door. The man in front crouches and grins at her, “Hello Janet, I’m Marcus. Are you ready to go?”

She nods her usual empty nod and steps towards them with a gait that I hope is at least meant to mimic sadness. The man picks up her hands, still crouching on the balls of his feet. He doesn’t shift or anything, perfectly still. She looks at him, and he looks at her.

“Do you want to say goodbye, Janet?” She nods.

There’s a pause, and then she looks up at me, faces me slowly, and wraps her thin arms around my right calf. When she turns back to Marcus, the small serial number tattooed into the side of his neck reading Marcus950, he reaches behind her left ear, touches something, and catches her as she falls limp. One of the others steps towards me as Marcus950 carries Janet to the car and hands me an envelope.

He nods, “Thank you sir. Please submit your report before the ninth of next month.”

They leave, and I close the door.

Originally on Ficly:

Part One: http://ficly.com/stories/16928

Part Two: http://ficly.com/stories/16929

Part Three: http://ficly.com/stories/16930

Part Four: http://ficly.com/stories/16931

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American Summer

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A Ficly about a working person appreciating a Summer Weekend. No twist here, just some lively detail that’s bound to put you in a good mood.

Inside the house with the AC blasting and the neighborhood kids calling to each other from outside, though the screens on the windows, I felt it. A Summer weekend, like a dream. A season of endless bliss that the kids anticipate during the days from September to June. Two months of listening to lawnmowers and grills, and sleeping without a blanket.

Kelly calls from the kitchen, and amidst the euphoria I answer back with a kind of swallowed yell. Tomorrow we’ll spend the day poolside with our daughters and several of the other families from the block. At some point we’ll reach the magic hour, when fighting off the wildlife with citronella becomes less important than sitting back with a beer or leaning into a steak and laughing with the group while the water splashes onto the pool deck and the lights are turned on.

Sunday night when when the world is quiet save for the crickets and their seven-hour-chirp, I’ll lay in bed and offer a deep sigh to the pillow or the ceiling, and know that if we all live to be seventy or eighty, five days really won’t have been so long to wait for that next Friday.

Originally on Ficly: http://ficly.com/stories/16881

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While It Lasts

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Written for a challenge on Ficly that asks writers to write something out of their usual genre. I went for something from a mother’s perspective. Maybe I’ll never know if I’ve been accurate at all on this one.

She cries and cries, little thing perched up on the bench while the doctor gives her the shot. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. She screams like someone is cutting her arm off. The pediatrician holds her gently to keep her from flailing, but doesn’t do much by way of calming her, like speaking to my child is some kind of taboo.

Tears drip off her red chin, red nose, red eyes. All I can do is stand in the corner and sigh and shudder gently like I know she will after the weeping is over and she has calmed down.

She will fall asleep in the car, sweaty, dressed in that little blue and yellow dress of hers, with the Disney band-aid covering the tiny cut. Pulling her out of the eighty degree car as she dozes will be a challenge, but eventually she’ll outgrow my arms. There’s something so valuable in enjoying it while it lasts. It seems like as soon as we get done growing up, we’ve already started growing old. Maybe someday when I’m old, we’ll have traded shoes, and she’ll be carrying me to my bed when I pass out in the car.

Until then she just sits in this doctor’s office and cries, while I look on, eyes maybe a shade redder than hers.

Originally on Ficly: http://ficly.com/stories/15946

Also, so far I’ve kept up a minimum of one Ficly a day for the past week, with a two a day average. – Adam

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