More old writing from grad school below... This piece came out of a prompt for class to write about "regret of a small incident" which I always thought evoked interesting elements. As a short story, I am not sure it hangs entirely together. Someone somewhere along the line told that switching point of view in a short piece is a no-no. But I'm not much crazy about rules, and I still feel OK about the multiple voices; that is, for me, the absorbing element of the story, that different narrators tell different stories. I am likely more interested in the subjectivity of reality than most though.
That Day in the Yard
Fenced View |
On
that day in the yard, she watched the expression on Tim Collins' face as her
father berated him. From her view on the
kitchen steps of the house, she couldn’t see her father’s face, only the
reddish tint of a flush that had crept up the back of his neck, and his hands
rising and falling as he illustrated his case.
He pointed once, and she saw Tim Collins’ eyes as they followed the path
of her father’s bony hand to two broken panes on window of the garage. As his eyes swept back from garage, they
paused and stayed on Maddy standing in the shadow of the house. He tilted his head ever so slightly to the
left, and squinted his eyes. She understood then that Tim knew, and also that
he wouldn’t argue with her father.
The
only person who witnessed the breaking of the windows was Maddy, when she
methodically put her fist through first the bottom right, and then bottom left
pane of the window, an unsuccessful experiment in self harm. Tim must have assumed that Maddy would lie to
her father if he accused her, and her father would likely believe his daughter
over a stranger. There was nothing that
directly linked her to the broken windows, although there was plenty that would
have or could have or should have exonerated the Collins brothers.
The windows had been broken
for over a week by the time the Collins Brothers Tree Care first came to take
down the elm tree. After breaking the
windows, she had taped cardboard over the empty spaces, and put a Band-Aid on
the one small cut across the back of her right hand. She hadn’t even known the tree trimmers were
coming the following week. She did know
the breakage would be discovered eventually, but why rush it? She’d already spent
the week arguing with her parents about SATs and college applications. She decided if she were confronted, she’d say
yes; by then, perhaps the dark burning feeling might have lifted. She thought she could confess under
examination, but her father never asked.
Instead, he made assumptions on the Collins brothers’ carelessness. And she stood and watched her father yell –
or not yell, as Davies only “politely discussed” – at Tim Collins. She just stood there and did nothing.
Her
father had theorized that the Collins brothers had backed a ladder into the
window, and then covered it with cardboard and tape. But why would the Collins brothers have gone
into the garage to tape the windows? Opening the gaping carport door would have
called attention to the invasion, and the side door was (however pointlessly)
kept locked. Had they broken the windows
from the outside, they would have scattered glass inside the garage, where it
would rain down behind the garden hoses and piles of scrap wood, not settle in
the dirt outside. Maddy had assumed her
father would recognize the inconsistencies.
She
watched as her father gesticulated at Tim Collins, who finally got a word in
and they both nodded, an agreement reached.
The next day, she would see Tim out there, replacing the glass panes
himself. He worked efficiently,
completing the task in an hour, but it was still time away from his business
and supplies and labor she was sure her father would not be billed for. Tim Collins paid the cost for her inability
to confess.
****
On that day in the yard, Tim
followed Mr. Davies' hand to look at the broken windows, and as he turned his
gaze back, his eyes met those of a scrawny teenage girl with messy hair
hovering by the back door of the house.
When he saw her, looking so scared, he continued to half-listen to
condescending tripe the father was laying on him, and he knew what had actually
happened. The panicked look on her face,
the way she couldn’t quite look at him but also couldn't look away, well, he
couldn’t help but feel bad for her. He’d
break some windows too if this guy were his father, the way he counted out
every error and never missed an opportunity for indignation. What a pain in the ass these suburbanites
were, with that river of crap rippling under all those private school
educations. Now he’d have to spend an
hour fixing the window, all because the dim old man couldn’t tell his perfect
little daughter, standing there with one arm wrapped in against her chest like
a rook harboring a busted wing, was so hung up or strung out or just plain
clumsy that she broke windows. Scratch
clumsy, it couldn’t be that. No one
accidentally breaks two windows -
unless, as Mr. Davies was taking pains to point out in detail, he were carrying
a ladder to put against an elm tree.
Tim couldn’t prove
otherwise. And even if he could, he
wouldn’t, because cripes, just look at her.
Like he wanted to add to that. He
would fix the windows early tomorrow, and she would see the repair, and then
maybe she would relax because clearly, this girl needed to relax. From his peripheral vision, Tim saw Mr.
Davies turning to see what Tim was staring at, and so Tim pulled his eyes away
from hers and faced him. The shift
created a pause in Mr. Davies’ monologue of complaints.
“I’ll fix the windows
tomorrow,” Tim said to him. And Mr.
Davies nodded his approval, although Tim could tell, his reputation was sunk
here. Good thing most of the other elms
in the area had already been pulled.
He’d had enough of this neighborhood.
Tim did have one more job a
few blocks away, just a few weeks later, and he admitted to himself, as he
detoured to drive down the Davies' street, he wondered what happened to that
girl. He never even spoke to her, but every
once in a while, her face would pop up, nervous and pinched, and he’d wonder if
she’d made out okay. Later on, after he
got married, and his wife was pregnant, he hoped for a boy. Fathers and daughters, it was too hard. He remembered that from his own sister, when
she’d slammed out of the house at seventeen.
Monica, his wife, had a boy, but after that, they had a girl, Abigail,
and he and Mitch sold the business, moved into carpentry instead, more
artistry, more reliable work, more money.
He didn’t want his girl breaking windows one day, but of course, he
didn’t know how things would go. He
hoped for good days ahead.
****
On that day in the yard,
George Davies thought, if the kid just showed some remorse, he’d feel better
about the whole thing. Instead, what was
that tree kid doing but staring toward the house, looking so intently that
George felt obligated to turn and look as well, and what did he see? – his
daughter. This tree-trimming
window-breaking boy was making goo-goo eyes at his daughter. For god sakes, what kind of a fool idiot was
he? And Maddy just stood there in her baggy clothes and that strange crumpled
stance she’d adopted over the last few years.
What did this kid, who was much too old for her anyway, what was he
thinking? George took a deep breath, and the kid must have remembered himself,
and turned back to face him, and met his eyes calmly, politely. And that shifted something for George, slowed
his thinking down and he remembered. He
was like this kid once, checking out every girl, practically out of
reflex. He remembered the raging
hormones. Some days, he still felt that
way about a stranger next to him in the elevator, like a chemical explosion
roiling right over him. Not that he
didn’t love his wife, just that, after so many years, the terrain was so familiar. Maybe this kid broke the windows on purpose,
just to spend more time at the house.
Maybe his Maddy was a little Juliet.
Maybe this kid wasn’t careless, but smitten.
And good luck to him. God knows, getting Maddy out of the house was
a chore. He had had to practically set
her on fire to get her to take the SATs again, and she should have known, after
that last dismal performance, that she couldn’t let those scores stand. She was smarter than that. He didn’t know why she didn’t try harder
sometimes, why she couldn’t apply her talents.
Sure, she wasn’t as smart as Cory, but she was a girl; she didn’t need
to be. What she needed was to perform to
her ability, and sometimes, he wondered if she was lazy like her little brother
Miles. At least she stayed out of
trouble. But then, she’d mostly stayed
away from boys too, boys like this nincompoop tree trimmer, staring at her like
she was a six-layer cake and he had a big fork.
George opened his mouth to continue his speech to the lovelorn little sicko,
but the boy started speaking before he could say anything.
“I’ll fix the windows
tomorrow,” the kid said. And George
nodded to himself, thinking, just the window.
Stay away from my daughter.
Later on, he’d think of that
boy, whatever his name was, Don Juan or Romeo or whoever he was. And as the years passed, and there was Maddy,
getting older and older, just making do, coasting, he wondered if maybe he’d
sheltered her too much. She never ended
up accomplishing much, job, career, awards.
No marriage either, no grandkids.
He couldn’t quite figure out where things went wrong. Of course, he was careful to say to himself
that it wasn’t that he didn’t love her – his flesh, his blood, his child. He’d cut off his right arm for her. But sometimes, she was a mystery to him, a
code he couldn’t decipher. Sometimes,
for no reason he could think of, he thought maybe he should have done something
different that day out by the tree, asked Romeo in for lemonade, made something
easier for her. But then, it wouldn’t
have made any difference. It was just a
day in the backyard with two broken window panes, the glass shining in the dirt
near the remains of that dead tree.
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