New Year's Eve, my mother and father and I stand at the entrance of the newest casino in our hometown. We've just seen a standup show. We held our noisemakers at midnight but didn't use them. Instead we watched my two sisters trot down the aisles, trying to get an autograph from the comedian, who is famous.
My sisters wore black satin. After the show they talked at the famous comedian, reaching the way they do, with their arms. Their arms are curved a good way, a better way than the older white planes of my own. Still, we're all a little glam. Two or three of us together are charming.
We've been waiting for the valet for twenty minutes. I watch the casino's mesmerizing, flashy sign, bright as a movie screen. The glowing fountain behind my sisters halos their hundred-dollar hair.
"From this doorway," my mother says, rubbing my arm to warm me, "you could be anywhere."
I'm sort of crazy about my parents. It has occurred to me before that I'm divorced because of it. I don't love anyone else that much.
"There's nothing to let you know where you are," says my father, “from this angle." He nods at the air.
His hair is still dark and his ruby-toned sweater has shape. My mother, too, seems young, except for one eye, which is shrinking. The white is marbled red, and the rest, say the doctors, is turning to lattice. When I stand to her right and say something, she jumps.
Someone once told me about love: It's knowing something other than yourself is real.
I squint where they're looking, and across the street I see a Shell sign, a green traffic light, and a building, a motel maybe, dim in the night fog, that I can't place.
I begin to wonder if it's intentional, this view from this doorway, if it's all carefully planned out to make us feel that we're very far away from our lives.
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This story once appeared in 971 Menu and was named as one of Wigleaf's Top 50 Very Short Fictions of 2008.
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Still, we're all a little glam. Two or three of us together are charming.
The glowing fountain behind my sisters halos their hundred-dollar hair.
to make us feel that we're very far away from our lives.
lovely, all
these are my favorite lines/images/moments
...in what is, after all, a love story--
many thanks, Gary
published as 'Elizabeth Foley,' yes? a great read, every time....
That's right, Scott. Thanks so much for choosing it and for the compliments.
Within a SHORT period, I was in the final issues of 971 Menu, Insolent Rudder, Literal Minded, and Drunk and Lonely Men, and Tuesday Shorts. Of all those, I was the most bummed about 971 Menu. Your story as well as Meg Pokrass's were both so wonderful.
"I'm sort of head-over-heels for my parents. It has occurred to me before that I'm divorced because of it. I don't love anyone else that much."
Wow, I love that line. The part about the shrinking eye and the mother jumping also got me, and good.
The ending paragraph...the way you start it with "I begin to wornder"...is magnificent.
Thanks so much, David, for the kind words.
It is a shame about 971 Menu. We should monopolize Greg's page here with begging. :)
I admire every bit of this. The arms, the admission of love for the parents, the strip, the mother's trouble revealed at the end. And I dearly love the sisters in black satin. I'm glad you're (still) a writer.
i've read this before, and love it too much. It's stunning.
Pia and Meg, thank you. You are both so kind.
This is stunning. I love her realization that she may never love anyone else because of how much she loves her parents. So much to this piece despite its length. I'm glad I've found your writing.
This is indeed magical...a cinderella quality, everything gauzy, neon-lit...you handle "lighting" in this piece like a stage tech pro. And the projections, can feel the air slowly coming out, the mother's shrinking eye, marbled red....the distance between "shores" in the flattening time one hour into the new year *