He presented her like the most perfect gift, as though she was just as much for me as she was for him. My son’s girlfriend played coy.  I was standing at the stove, more than a little angry that they’d caught me in the stereotypical stance of domesticity.  I’d always believed it a lie, anyway.

I rubbed my finger under my nose, a gesture my son recognized for what it was: displeasure.   Out of habit, I rubbed my hands on a yellow calico dishtowel, even though my hands were clean.  I extended a hand, which she took, limply, not even the good sense to give it a decent squeeze. 

Over time, I came to like her, then respect her after finding out that her origins weren’t the best, that life was difficult for her for a number of reasons, though, god, she was a beauty.  When my son circled her tiny waist with his muscled arm, I felt a twinge, and chased thoughts away that no self-respecting mother should ever have.  I thought of the beautiful grandchildren they might give me some day:  his brains, her good looks. 

He stopped bringing her around as often.  I hadn’t thought much of it.  He was busy climbing the ladder.  His ambition he got from me, I was always proud to say.   He was in and out of the house.  The steam wasn’t even dispelled from the shower and I’d go in to breathe the clean smell of his after-shave.  I still picked up his towels from the floor, why not?

Three weeks before Christmas he told me that he and the girl with the tiny waist were over.  He wrung his hands and I felt like I’d been slapped.   I’d invested time in the girl, I protest.  I’d imagined two beautiful grandkids, a boy and a girl to keep me company once I slowed down.   Their faces I conjured in prolific luminosity.  I called them various names at various times in my head.

I felt led on and I told him so.  Enough, he said, holding his head.  It’s over. 

Well.  I said it like an indictment.  He waved me off.  I saw the circles under his eyes. 

That night, I lay in bed, worrying my fingers, a habit from my childhood after the death of my mother.  I thought it could keep any more loss at bay.   Eventually I fell asleep.  I dreamt that my mother had returned, with two children, who I mistook for children of my own.  They both looked just like her. 

On New Years Day, my son introduced me to a girl whose name I would never learn to pronounce.   I felt her cunning right down to my marrow.   She will be the ruin of you, I told him, quiet that night.   After the shatter of glass and the slam of the door,  I worried my fingers and took a sleeping pill.   I felt a pain in my lower region.  I wanted to call it resignation, but I feared something else.

My mother came to me, again, that night in a dream.  I asked her about the children.  What children, she asked me.  I looked behind her and under her apron.  She held her hand up, pushed me away. I woke before I should have, groggy and sweating.   My son sat at the kitchen table, he fingers a tent held up to his forehead.   I started the coffee and busied myself with nothing at the sink. 

When I handed him a steaming mug, he took it without the edge I hoped he would still have.  It would get him through.

Instead, he took one of my hands in his.  Everything is ahead of you, I said, my voice braver than I felt.   His cell phone rang and he dropped my hand on the cold table, and left out the back door.   I watched him from the kitchen window.  The cold air blew through the door he left ajar.   I drank that pot of coffee right down to the dregs and vowed to put up a fight.  LS

Downtown you felt netted, a one-eyed fish, big behind double-paned glass. Soprano sax piped from invisible outdoor speakers, stunted shrubs that weren’t shrubs at all, even though that’s what you called them. Women slender in dark skirts taunted by city wind, wrapping around, patted it all back down, and threshed a weave with closely cropped angular young men who never had hair growing where it shouldn’t.

You felt missing for cool air, crisp air. Sometimes there was no air. It was dirty air, thick air. Stainless steel and glass. The wrong change in your pocket you watched the bus roll away. Your buddy wearing Brooks said to never let them see you ride. You took a walk, hopped the turnstile underground.

Peanut brittle crumbled in your pocket as you picked up the paper blue bundle at the narrow storefront uptown, took it up your three flights. The skinny old laundry man fucked it up. Lost one of your best socks. The one in hand now worthless.

And that’s the word you used when you said it out loud to his face. Scrawny old gray stubble ripping you off for a bundle of laundry and the folds done the wrong way. When he opened up the half door counter in the back where he hid, you snapped in a circle, the reek of vodka, sweat and chlorine. You saw the dark inked letter, dashed four digits embedded in his arm, looked away and never went back. LS

The congregation whispers, fidgets, and breathes like bellows. The wedding party are  running way behind schedule. Tensions mount as the ceremonial time passes. The bald  pastor rearranges his papers. Checks his watch, the lines deepening on his face.

Her wedding party fixes, adjusts, makes last minute preparations. She can’t seem to get her ringlets to behave, to twist in the manner they did at her run-through. “Do something,” she pleads with her maid of honor. Her panic mounts. She grabs the curling iron, snaps, “You’re just making it worse!”

To calm her, dad leads her aside, into the narrow hallway. He wants to savor these last moments with his sole daughter. His pride and joy. He takes her hand, opens it face up in both of his. Says, “When I was your age, we could fit everything we owned right here.” Traces a circle in her hand with his finger. “We had nothing.” He sighs, thinks of his own failed marriage. He asks her, “You’re sure you wanna do this?”

It takes her by complete surprise. The one question she wishes he might have avoided.

She glances outside to steel herself, into the churchyard. The sun gleams on the gravestones. It feels like she’s wearing ankle weights as the organ barks the wedding march.  LS