Author: 2024 Spring Writing Contest

It wasn’t the pram wheels that got stuck when they crossed the trainline, although that was what she worried about. The iron wheel rims always wedged in ruts. You can’t carry a baby everywhere, not when you have another child as well. The three-year-old liked to be out. Even as a baby, he’d worm an arm free from the blanket and wave his fist to the world. You couldn’t swaddle his independence, not the way she wrapped the baby girl’s sweet, paddling limbs. He ran so fast, flying his wooden train engine on invisible tracks of imagination, catching her own heart up into flights of joy, and fear. She couldn’t tell where he might run. She watched him, but not like the hawk that wheeled above the railway crossing. A hawk only had to watch one thing at once, to track its prey, whereas she had both the boy and the baby. Today the babe was fussing, a broken hiccupping snuffle, after a broken night’s sleep. The mother swatted at the fly sticking to the baby’s mouth. The walk would send the child to sleep soon, she knew it would. And it would keep the boy busy, so he wouldn’t poke his sister with his toy… Where was the boy?

Fred lays back in his favourite recliner two weeks after heart surgery. A cooking show is on the television and his mouth waters as the chef digs into a burger. The juices drip down the chef’s chin as he chews on the beefy goodness.

The clatter of his wife’s cooking comes from the kitchen next to the lounge. Fred’s pulled out of his dream state as a sulfury stench comes wafting into the lounge. “Fwah, what the hell’s that?”

“Your dinner. You’ll love it,” says Ivy as she stirs the cabbage on the stove.

The email lands in my inbox with a thud, and I stare at my computer as if I’ve found a spaceship in my cornfield. It’s the first time a literary agent has read my entire manuscript. My eyes scan her words for a quick clue as to her intention: is it good, bad?  

Does she come in peace? 

“You are a terrific writer,” I read. Terrific is in italics, and I feel elated. I imagine the extra two seconds it took to press command + i, and I count them as mounting evidence that this email might change my life. I skip across the following sentences in search of more clues until my eyes tangle at the most unfortunate coordinating conjunction. 

But. 

It was five minutes to the hour and the couple sitting in Alan’s therapy office were in a tail spin. To stay grounded, Alan gripped a small, smooth piece of granite, with colors evenly split between speckled white and creamy black. He found the stone on a trip to the Oregon coast with his wife and daughter during happier times. When he picked it up, his wife said it looked like a yin and yang symbol. Alan sometimes used it as a tool to keep him centered during tense sessions, but today it wasn’t working. He had been reaching for it a lot lately. He loosened his grip on the stone along with the thoughts of his own marriage and refocused his attention to the couple on the couch in front of him.

“I can’t do this anymore” Carol sobbed into her hands.

”Carol, I love you. We can figure this out.” Ted reached his hand to Carol but his voice was flat, void of emotion.