101 Words

Just an accident, my mother tells the doctor wrapping my arm in a cast. You know kids. He smiles and draws a happy face when he’s done.

Just an accident, I tell the counselors when they question the injuries. I’m quite clumsy.

Just an accident, I parrot repeatedly, like my mother taught me. She reminds me it’s my fault I need to be punished, and I believe her.

For a while.

Just an accident, the cops say when they show up at our house. Faulty brakes, icy road. I nod solemnly and close the door.

My smile is not an accident.

I went to him because that’s what I always did when life became too much, but I wasn’t thinking. My eyes were puffy, crumpled divorce papers thrown into the back seat, and all I knew was that I needed my dad.

I made it to the door of his meal room before it hit me: others laughed and chatted, but he sat alone while a nurse with a sing-song voice spoon-fed him.

His eyes lit up as I approached. “H-how are things?” he rasped.

I squeezed his shoulders and smiled. “Perfect,” I lied, and then kissed him gently on the cheek.

Every Saturday’s the same.

An old widower limps to the bodega for a $1 lottery ticket as a young boy sells hand-painted tokens on the corner. Happy faces, different colors, arranged on a plastic tray.

“Hope tokens here!”

“How much?”

“Dollar each. How many, Mister?”

“Not today.”

The scene repeats—no token purchase, no winning ticket.

One Saturday, as the man passes, the boy offers him a token—a happy brown face like his.

“For you, Mister.”

“Not today.”

“My treat.”

“Okay.”

Tuesday’s news: “Widower wins $100,000 lottery.”

That Saturday, the widower approaches the boy.

“How many, Mister?”

“All of them.”

I am not a coward. I just got married, we wanted kids, and I heard they were starting the draft. I came up with a plan to fail the physical. I wouldn’t fight a war I didn’t believe in.

The letter said I had two weeks. I slept only two hours a night, drank tons of coffee, and gulped down salt water. My blood pressure was so high, it felt as if my head was going to explode.

I never made it to the physical.

I look at Donna as she feeds me. I can tell she thinks I’m a coward.

In the apartment, we only had a living room. Now the burbs have gifted us a family room, too. Another unnecessity, like the fireplace that will stand sterile in 70-degree winters.

“Drywall over it. Then you’ll have another wall,” said the husband.

“I don’t need another wall.” My words ricocheted inside the bare space.

“One day we might.”

One day. That pacifies six-year-old hopefuls. Deludes middle-aged unexplorers. Aborts yet-to-be grandparents. “One day. One day.” Placates doomed bathroom visits, plastic stick always trembling in my hands. “One day. One day. One day.” Until the phrase whittles itself down stick-thin, empty—like me.

In one sense it was over, but in another, it wasn’t. There was a lot of clearing up to do.

And quite a bit of explaining.

Jack had had no choice—he’d been thinking on his feet—but now there was the aftermath: the ogre’s twisted corpse, over forty feet long, lying on the ruins of the neighbour’s vegetable patch.

And the beanstalk. Over a mile of it. Who knew how much damage it had done.

Or how much of his stolen fortune the reparations would cost.

He stared at the Golden Goose now pecking about at his feet. “Start laying!”

Ugo the Elder watched as the land cracked and died for want of rain. The crops withered and there was no more game to hunt. Ugo and the other adults slaughtered the farm animals and only saved their breeding stock (for they all knew you had to save the breeding stock for your future) and still they starved. The children cried.

When winter came Ugo and the other adults slaughtered again. It was quiet, no more tears, and the adults were no longer hungry. As Ugo ate his meaty stew in silence, he mumbled, “You have to save the breeding stock.”