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Cluck Like Chickens
January 1, 2007 in 299 Words, Books, Family, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Literature, novels, Poetry, reading, Short stories, Stories, Very Short Novels, Writing | by davidbdale | 5 comments
How I love the silence of the consulting room when my patients are in their deep sleep and my fees are being paid. For me it’s like a lunch-hour nap I can be awake to enjoy. Two minutes ago, the confetti of their grievances was everywhere, and then—snap! I haven’t seen them this relaxed since, well, since last week. Concerned observers might ask why I don’t cure them. The answer is: I don’t cure, and there is no cure for riding a dead horse. Their problems are solved in advice columns every day. Mom, Dad, you’re sexually incompatible. That was clear when you were dating, but the fact that she liked to give you something “for special occasions” seemed charming. She’s unfulfilled, but not by you; for fulfillment she’d need a goal, and for that she’d need an imagination. No “occasion” will ever again be “special” enough. Why can you not see this? The kids see it. They “act out” because their personal family sitcom is all situation and no comedy, plus detention is cool in their circle. It’s no wonder I prefer the whole lot of them hypnotized. They dress well. If I propped their heads up, they could be posing for a catalogue. My diagnostic training is wasted on the bland. What I wouldn’t give for just one pungent psychosis that would flavor every family enmeshment, or a deviant strain of parentification over generations. I had a vocation for that, I thought; instead, I’m solving riddles of why girls eat, or why they don’t. Or why daddy here thinks his pothole under repair of a wife is unsexy. Maybe that’s the deepest plumbing of the heart; maybe my problems are as obvious as theirs; maybe I’m the one who’s being cheated when I put them down.
Copyright © January 1, 2007
The Contract
December 28, 2006 in 299 Words, Books, Family, Fiction, Flash Fiction, novels, Poetry, reading, Short stories, Stories, Very Short Novels, Writing | Tags: Child, Mystery, Neglect, Suspicion | by davidbdale | 7 comments
When my child was born healthy, I didn’t ask “Why me?” I cherished her. A hundred days I coddled her, produced the milk, and she woke up alive. That’s not a hundred little miracles; it’s the contract. The day she didn’t wake up, she breached that contract. I demanded answers from the doctors who’d delivered me a flaw. They handed me a made-up word to take back home and nurse. If my baby died of what they told me, then I’m dying too, we’re all dying, of Gradual Adult Death Syndrome. Last year, again, I held the future to my breast, a little animal he was, with slick black hair, a beastly cry and vacant, needful look. He didn’t live three weeks, cause of death undetermined. The coroner doesn’t know what to think when a second infant dies without symptoms in the same crib to the same parents. For my part, I don’t suspect the mother, but what must my husband be thinking? The cops have theories; they cover for the doctors. The prosecutor is probing our family dynamic. The father, he puts his foot into the belly of a file cabinet. What do they mean by dynamic? There’s just the husband and me. If he suspected me, I’d understand. My sister has a baby, too, just two days older than ours would be, who sleeps on her back and wakes up gargling and farting. My husband holds her in his lap. She nestles in the furrow between his thighs and blinks as he blows soft silent whistles across her eyes. A tear slides down to the tip of his nose. He is dear. I want so much to share with him this multitude I carry. But I am dying, gradually, and he has too much faith in me.
Copyright © December 28, 2006
Very Short Novels 