Angie Kinghorn

Done

When he finally leaves the office, Josh walks out into a clear night and sighs.

“Cig?  You look like you could use one.”  Andrew sits on a bench sheltered from the wind by a marble wall, swaddled in a swath of cashmere that wraps, constrictor-like, from his collarbone to his chin.

“Nah, I quit five years ago,” Josh says.  His iPhone rings, and without glancing at the caller ID, he silences it.

“What the hell, gimme one.”

Their smoke rings mix with fogged breath.  In his pocket, Josh’s iPhone buzzes again and again, a beetle trying to jump out of its shell.

“You gonna ignore it all night?”  Andrew asks.

“Planning on it.  I’m so done for the day.  He wants anything else done, it can wait until–”  Josh checks his watch “–we get in.  Which should be about six hours from now.”

“It’s your funeral.”

They watch the line at The Zebra Room across the street, miniskirts, sequined tops and hair gel corralled behind a velvet rope.

And then she’s there.  A flash of red hair, her green coat.  She’s with someone he’s never seen before.  They move under a streetlight.  He’s tall.  His muscles have muscles and his black turtleneck shows them all.

As Josh watches, squints, she touches Turtleneck’s chest.  Time freezes with the air.  He can see her ring glitter in the light, and as her sleeve falls back, he sees her charm bracelet.  The one she never takes off.  As she laughs, he thinks he can hear the tinkle of the charms from his bench in the shadows.

His phone buzzes.  Across the street, she has her own phone out, and a finger to her lips.

“Hello?”

“Hey, hon!  I just wanted to check and see how late you were going to be.”

Josh watches Turtleneck nuzzle her neck.  Her muffled giggle mixes with the sounds of the others in line.

“Where are you?  It sounds loud.”

“Oh, that’s just the TV.  I’m at home.”

“Well, I …” Josh looks at his fiancé, edging closer to the bouncer.  He reaches for rage but finds only a deep pool of exhaustion.

“I’m gonna be a while.”

“Well, I’ll just go on to bed.  Love you!”

She slips her phone back into her clutch and disappears into the club.  Josh crushes his cigarette and heads back into the building.

“Thought you were done,” Andrew calls.

“Me, too.”

 

This is a fiction piece for the online writers’ group Write On Edge.  The prompt:  In 400 words or less, write a story or memoir which relates to choices and/or consequences. Because of the word limits, you may choose to focus just on the choice, or just on the consequence. Remember to capture a moment using dialogue, action, and reaction.

I love feedback, but I really love constructive criticism!  Tell me what you think.

Bread and banana peels

Trying to outrun the rain, I raced with my kids into the warm haven of the bakery this afternoon.  It’s bright, warm, full of wood and fresh bread and generous samples; simple happiness and carbohydrates set to the tune of the brass bell on the door.

Standing in line, Grant wrapped himself around my left leg, and Anne around my right.  They’re 5, and such random displays of affection are rare enough now that I breathed in the smell of cinnamon, yeast, and grain and simply let us be, enjoying their warmth and closeness as I studied the menu board.

I was stroking their hair and basking in the smell of fresh bread when I heard the first strains of the new song seep through the hidden speakers.

The essence of my father drifted down with the music and landed right in front of me, smiling, whole, young and healthy, dancing and singing the chorus as I’d seen him do a thousand times.

“Sugar pie, honey bunch, you know that I love you!  I can’t help myself, I love you and nobody else!”*

Nobody else noticed the sudden exuberant presence dancing in our midst, not even my children.

I felt my father there, as tangible as the samples of  bread I was feeding the twins, but reaching out for him would win me nothing but air and strange looks.

The song continued to play and I saw my father dance, heard the sound of him happy at the same time I ordered a round loaf of the tomato swiss, and a toaster loaf of the whole grain, please, and oh, you’re kidding, what do you mean you’re out of cookies?

Mommy Automaton took over and I watched as she fed the kids samples of muffins and sweets to find something palatable in lieu of cookies.  All the while I saw her and the children through the flickering images of a home movie memory.  It was set in the basement of my childhood home, with my father’s prized jukebox spinning ‘45s–The Tams, The Four Tops, The Temptations.  He and my mother danced around the hardwood floors until I begged for a turn, and then he spun me around the floor.

As we left the bakery, I cradled those images, remembering in a mix of pain and gratitude before they vanished like smoke.

Grief is a trickster, a hustler, the ultimate con man with the tradecraft of a spy.  He shows up when you least expect him, and no matter how erratically I drive, or how I vary my schedule, I’m resigned that he’ll follow me everywhere.  He’ll wait until I think I’m ok, then set ambushes and place banana peels in my path so that I can fall and feel the excruciating pain of a missing part.

At home, I overheard Anne practicing a song for Daddy’s Day at preschool.

“Daddy Daddy let me say, I love you in every way.

I love you for what you do.

I love you for who you are.

Daddy Daddy, let me see, I love you and you love me.”

Boom.  Banana peel.

 

*I Can’t Help Myself, by The Four Tops

This post is a response to a prompt for the online writers’ group, Write on Edge.

The prompt:  Select an old blog post you’ve written and rewrite it as a memoir piece. You can focus on one element from it, or include them all, depending on what it’s about. Make sure somewhere in your RemembeRED piece you link to the post upon which you’re basing it.

Word limit is 500.

This is the post I used as inspiration.  I labeled it memoir, but it’s most definitely a blog post.  It was written on the first anniversary of my father’s death, and it’s about flashbacks and grief.  As, obviously, is this piece.

http://www.angiekinghorn.com/2010/09/flashback/

Write on Edge: RemembeRED

Mary’s son

Yesterday, on Maundy Thursday, our choir sang a piece that has haunted me since.  It’s about Jesus, but through the lens of his mother, Mary.  The piece spans his life from birth to death, with Mary standing by to offer a mother’s comfort to her son at every juncture.

Each Lenten season we remember Jesus’ suffering, and since I’ve become a mother to a son, I’ve found God’s willingness to sacrifice  his own son that much more amazing.  As I watch my son grow and come to love him more with each day that passes, the idea of loving an entire people enough to give his precious body over to be broken for them … let’s just say my heart isn’t as big as God’s.  I couldn’t do it.  I look at the tender skin at the nape of his neck and I marvel at the scope of God’s love for us.  I couldn’t do it; not for anything.

But yesterday’s service reminded me that Jesus wasn’t just God’s son.  He was Mary’s son.  Mary bore him, raised him, and watched as he was abandoned by his disciples, tried before the Sanhedrin, and then stood at the foot of the cross and watched her beloved son’s hands and feet nailed to the wood.

Could you do it?  As a mother, could you stand there and watch soldiers nail your son (a grown man, but your son nonetheless) to a cross, then jeer as they tortured him with a crown of thorns and pierced his side with a spear?  Could you stand by and watch?

I couldn’t.

Let me share this music with you, because it speaks far more eloquently than I ever could.  Listen to the violin weep.  Hear the lullaby that echoes the ones you’d sing to your own babies.  Prepare yourself for the piano thundering its anger at the mention of Golgatha.  And through it all, imagine that you’re Mary, and that this is your memory, your son.

The piece is called Pietá, by Joseph M. Martin, and you can hear a beautiful rendition of it here.  Please go listen.

Are you crying yet?

Here, let me give you the lyrics:

 In the shadow of a manger,

by a candle’s dancing flame,

tender Mary holds her baby,

and she breathes His holy name.

“Jesus, rest your weary head,

close your weeping eyes.”

As evening falls, she starts to sing a lullaby.

“Lulay, lulay, peace be yours tonight.”

In the shadow of the temple,

in a place so far from home,

Mary sees her child of wonder,

and she marvels how He’s grown.

“Jesus rest your weary head,

and think on gentle things.”

With loving arms she holds her Saviour and she sings,

“Lulay, lulay, peace be yours tonight.”

In the shadow of Golgatha,

underneath a darkened sky,

Mary gently cradles Jesus,

Through her tears she says goodbye.

“Jesus, rest your weary head.

Your work on earth is done.”

And as the darkness falls, she whispers to her son,

“Lulay, lulay, peace be yours tonight.”

 

This music pulls tears from me.  Mother’s tears, as it’s finally hit me just what God (and Jesus, and Mary) sacrificed.  Turn the painting a bit and the fuzzy parts become clear.  I always knew Jesus was a man, but to think of him as a mother thinks of her own son … well, that triggers a whole different set of instincts, and perhaps a whole new level of understanding.

The Good Friday service tonight included a hymn (O Sacred Head, Now Wounded) that summed it up perfectly for me in the last verse:

 

“What language shall I borrow to thank thee, dearest friend,

for this thy dying sorrow, thy pity without end?

O make me thine forever, and should I fainting be,

Lord let me never, never outlive my love to thee.”

No language can possibly be sufficient to thank any of the players in this passion for their sacrifice.  No words could ever be enough.  Tonight I cry, mother’s tears of sorrow mixed with sinner’s tears of joy, for we have all been offered the priceless gift of redemption.
Praise be to God.

And THAT is why Easter eggs are a bad idea

Easter has nothing to do with eggs.  Or bunnies.  And we need to start remembering this, because Easter eggs are a dangerous business.  Besides teaching our children that the Cadbury bunny lays creme filled chocolate eggs, they encourage preschool teachers to do lots of art projects involving eggs.

Which is fine, until they involve actual eggs.

Wednesday

I was instructed to send several hard boiled eggs to school with Anne on Wednesday because her class was going to dye them before they had their Easter egg hunt.

Naturally I forgot about the eggs until 8:00 that morning.

So I tried to boil them, quickly.  Which, as anyone who has ever boiled eggs knows, is a BAD idea.  Eggs don’t like high heat.  (And yes, Mom, I did use cold water.  I just turned the gas burner on high.)

Ahem.

Anyway, one egg cracked and spilled its white guts into the water about a minute into this process, and a foreboding sensation came over me.  Nothing good was coming from these eggs.

I sent Anne off to school with two still warm eggs in a Glad ware container, expecting to hear all about egg dyeing that afternoon.

But, as soon as she got in the car: “Mommy, we didn’t do the eggs today because so many people didn’t bring them in yet.  So they have to bring them in tomorrow and we’re gonna do them tomorrow.”

I was mollified and somewhat smug.  I’d gotten her eggs to school.

Ha.  (Mommy lesson: never feel smug.  It will bite you in the ass.)

Thursday

Thursday the twins climbed into the van after school, and all Anne could talk about was the eggs.

“Mommy, we dyed the eggs today!  Guess what color mine are!”

“Pink?”

“Yes, pink!”

When we got home, she cradled the eggs to her chest in their tiny bit of egg carton and raced upstairs, yelling, “I’ve got to keep them warm so they can hatch!”

Wait, what?

“Anne!”  I bellowed.  “Do NOT sit on those eggs!  Do you hear me?  Do NOT SIT ON THE EGGS!”

She poked her face around the stair railing.  “Well, how am I supposed to keep them warm, then?”

“It’s almost 80 degrees outside.  They’re plenty warm.  Besides, if you sit on them, they’ll crack and you’ll get shell everywhere.”

Later that night, as we were putting the kids to bed, Anne proudly announced to Mark that she was keeping her eggs warm in the house so they could hatch baby chicks.

“Um, I don’t think so,” he said.

“Yep, not gonna happen,” I said.

“Yes, it is.  I have to keep them warm, and then the baby chicks will hatch out,” she insisted.

“Anne,” I said, “there are no chicks in those eggs.  Trust me.  Besides, what would you want with chicks?  Do you know what happens with chicks?  They grow up to be chickens.  And then we’d have chickens.  And you really don’t want chickens.”

“Why?”

“Because then you’d have to kill them,” Mark said.  “Now go to sleep.”

“Why would you have to kill them?” she asked, wide eyed.

“To eat,” he said.

“How do you kill a chicken?” she asked.

“You catch it, and then you chop off its head,” Mark told her.

“Ok, I think we’re really getting away from the point here, which is that there are no chicks in these eggs,” I said.  “And I know this because I cooked them.”

Anne turned to me, her chocolate eyes wide.  “Mommy, you cooked my chicks?  Why did you cook my chicks?”

“There were no chicks.  These were chick-less eggs.  Don’t worry about it.  Goodnight.”

Friday

This morning Anne was still carrying her eggs around the house, cooing to them as if they’d hatch any moment.  Mark and I kept reminding her not to drop them.

So of course, she dropped one.

The egg merely cracked and we got pieces of shell on the kitchen floor, but Anne?  Anne erupted like Mount Vesuvius.  Tears.  Wailing.  Hysterics when Mark threw the egg away.  And finally, a retreat to her bedroom and a refusal to come out.

“Anne?”  I called up from the foyer.  “Sweetie?  What’s going on?  Why won’t you come down?”

She appeared at the top of the stairs.

“It’s because I’m worried about Burt.  He’s lonely.”

“Burt?  Who’s Burt?”

“My other egg!”

“You named an egg Burt?”  I started laughing.  All I could think was that the egg in the trash must be Ernie.

She cracked a smile, too, before remembering that she was furious at me.

When she finally came downstairs, she and Grant played in the living room while I tweeted news of the first egg’s demise.  And then I heard it.

Crunch.

“Oh, no!  Was that Burt?”

“Yes!”  Grant said, running to me.  “She dropped Burt!  You need to bake her some more eggs right now, Mommy!”

Anne tearfully offered up the bright pink, cracked egg.  Yep, she’d dropped Burt.  I hugged her and couldn’t help but laugh again.  “Anne, this is great news!  You’ve solved your problem!  You don’t have to worry about Burt being lonely anymore!  He’s going to be in the trash with Ernie!!!”

She was not amused.  Grant continued to demand that I “bake her more eggs, or else I’ll show you some Kung Fu moves.”

“Ok, Grant?  You do not order Mommy around.  And your Kung Fu moves look like Spiderman poses.  Also?  You do not bake eggs.  You boil them.  And I’m not making any more because  you’ll break them.”

“No we won’t!”

“Yes, you will.  Y’all break everything.  Name one thing you haven’t broken.”

He thought for a few seconds, then looked triumphant.  “You!  We haven’t broken you, Mommy!”

“You can’t break me.”

“We haven’t torn you to pieces,” he said.

Where the hell is my son hearing this stuff? I thought.  And should I check his room for hacksaws?  “Not true,” I said, grimly.  “You two ripped my abdominal muscles four whole inches apart when I was pregnant with you.”

“AHA!!!  We did it!”  Grant yelled, jumping in the air and pumping his fist.  “We broke Mommy!”

What.  The.  Hell.

“Yes, and you continue to break Mommy’s mind every day,” I said, calmly.  Then I thwacked him on the head with the mini-box of raisins I was putting into his lunch box.  “Hurting people is not funny.  I don’t want to hear you joking about it again, you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Anne was silent the whole drive to school.  She didn’t hug me goodbye.  She wouldn’t even tell me goodbye.

So now I have a migraine and a daughter who isn’t speaking to me and two broken eggs named Bert and Ernie doing God knows what in the trash.

And that is why Easter eggs are a bad idea.