In Short

In short, Meredith was tired and underappreciated. “Life has not been kind to me,” she thought as the steel wheels groaned in front of her. She imagined the joy on the face of her high school friend Jeanie, whose rich husband made love to her in their mansion five nights a week. “Nine inches! Can you believe it? He even let me measure!” In her self-deprecating, sullen defeat, Meredith ran through her mental rolodex of successful high-school friends, grammar-school friends, and church-friends. Becca, from Mrs. Wentworth’s geometry class, had gotten a Masters from Columbia and now lived on Wall Street and sipped Martinis in clubs that required written invitations for admission.

A vulgar gurgling brought Meredith back to her own reality. The reality of a fat, alcoholic husband who’s greatest pride in life was being the starting quarterback his freshman year at a Junior College. At night she could hear him in the basement den regaling his friends of his sexual exploits during that sole year of “higher education”. He didn’t even bother to whisper or wait until Mary had gone to bed. His snide remarks imprinted themselves in her brain while she stewed in front of the television. After a time, she began parroting her father’s contemptuous speech. “I don’t WANT to eat the broccoli! You should, you are the fat one!” Meredith’s initial anger would then fade into sobs, whereupon she would run to the only room in the house where she was free from persecution. This provided only temporary relief however, for the unwarranted hatred she felt soon gave way to a vacuum of dependence that drained what little humanity or pride she still desperately clutched. For fifteen years she had stifled the gurgling and wiped the spit bubbles from her son’s mouth.

At first it wasn’t bad. She had received an outpour of praise and sympathy from her friends. “It’s so noble of her.” “What a sacrifice.” Where were her friends now? They realized what Meredith hadn’t. Thomas would never get better, he would never walk, he would never feed himself.

Earlier that night she had looked at him in the dark glow of his bedroom that was little more than a hall closet. Hearing her panting breaths behind him, he squirmed in his chair to get a look at her. When his efforts were not met with immediate success, he began thrashing his gnarled arms and the terrible, guttural gurgling came. It was the closest he ever came to speech. Meredith dreamed entire dreams of only the sound—like an enormous dying rat that would not die but instead writhed in pain for an eternity. She woke up in sweats, cursing that sound.

She said nothing, only sighed while she thought aloud in her mind, mentally annunciating each word that she couldn’t speak in the physical world. “If only my friends could see me now, feel what I’m feeling. If only Scott hadn’t been laid off.” Thomas began unleashing high-pitched shrieks. A steady stream of saliva poured down his chin and onto his shirt. Oh the buckets of spit she had cleaned in her life! Hundreds at least—enough to fill a small pool. Lately she had stopped trying. It was not so bad when he was an infant. All infants drool and spit, and at least then there had been some sentiment, however small, that it would stop some day. But now he was fifteen and small black hairs had begun to spring up above his upper lip, and when she wiped his mouth with a tissue she could feel them on the back of her hand. Soft black hairs not yet, nor ever to be, coarse with the violence of manhood. When it happened, the sensation would cause her to stop and dry-heave in disgust. He would only keep looking at her with blank eyes like baseballs. Sometimes he would cock his head to the side like a big ugly dog.

It bothered Meredith when he looked at her like that. In times of great stress, crazy thoughts would leap in her heart and she’d think maybe he enjoyed making her do these things, and that’s why he watched her with such intense fixation. Maybe he liked it.

She grunted under the weight of her load. The left wheel rattled. She looked left and right nervously. “I should have oiled it.”

Her husband had helped for the first few years, but one night she came home from the grocery store and through the kitchen window saw him hit Thomas when he wouldn’t take a spoonful of soup. That was practically the last time the two were allowed in the same room as each other. It was an implicit understanding; there hadn’t even been a fight. “In front of the window for all the neighbors to see?” was all she said.

Meredith blamed her doctor. She blamed God. The influence of God, not the man himself. In her father’s home her family danced around her like crazed harpies. After an hour she offered up the possibility that no one wanted to mention. They seemed to shout at her stomach that had not yet begun to show. “No Way. No How. God does not save those types of women.”

Seven months later she wore a ring and carried a seven pound burden in her womb. “If only… If only…” she would cry in her bed, no longer hearing her own voice.

Now she paced furiously down the crumbling path, her mini-van barely visible three-quarters of a mile behind them. She forced her husband to work overtime for three months to buy the one with the special lift operator. Thomas smiled his big dumb smile and tried to grab the salty wind as it blew into his face. Water fell from Meredith’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks, emotionless stone facades. It had already been decided. There was nothing to it.

The old wheels got caught in the uneven pavement every fifteen feet or so and she cursed audibly each time. She pushed faster. Thomas bounced in his seat, loving the game and gurgling accordingly She slowed when they got to the pier. Old splintered boards and pipes jutted upwards and pierced the starless night. Houses and playgrounds had been razed by countless storms and reborn as massive piles of debris that seemed to possess some artistic quality. She thought they might make a good photograph. A black and white one. In fact, she was fairly certain she had seen one just like it in a museum that her father had taken to her when she was a child.

At the very last plank she stopped and stood beside her son. Not another soul was around. Even the hobos held to much pride to sleep in such a place. A single tear fell from the tip of her nose and mixed with the gnashing ocean thirty feet below.

That morning, her wretch of a daughter had been caught stealing gulps from unfinished beer cans. She had inherited more than a sharp tongue from her father.

Meredith took a deep breath. Her big belly that had borne nothing but abomination flattened temporarily. She picked up her son from his chair and struggled mightily to hold him over the edge. His great big baseball eyes looked upwards as he hung over the water and for once she missed his gaze. Suddenly the moon burst through a thin cloud to lend its light to the scene, and she gasped in horror at the reflection she saw in a shattered mirror at her feet. Just then, Thomas’ black mustache brushed against her neck, causing her to cringe violently and let her arms fall limp. The moon, who had been the only witness, vanished again.