Thursday, August 17, 2017

Statues
















































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Sunday, July 23, 2017

THE QUESTION - a short story




                                   THE QUESTION

                               By Roy L. Pickering Jr.




"Let me tell you something, Janice. You screwed up 
big time. There's no way you're going to find another 
man to treat you as good as I did."

"Yeah. You treated me like a goddamn princess."

"You implying that I didn't? You're standing there 
with the fucking Hope diamond on your finger, 
wearing designer clothes, not having to lift a 
finger to do anything but charge things on the 
credit cards I pay the bills for. Yet you still have the 
nerve to ..."

"I had the nerve to raise our child basically by 
myself," Janice said. "I had the audacity to spend 
countless nights alone while you went off on one 
business trip after another."

"And like a fool I thought I could trust you. After 
everything I've done for you. After everything I've 
given ..."

"I'm sick and tired of hearing that, Roland. I'm not 
a whore. I'm not here because you buy me things. 
I'm here because we're supposed to love each other. 
You want to talk about giving things? How about 
the love I squandered on you while you took me 
for granted."

"If you're not a whore then what were you doing 
with James? At least your sister has the excuse of 
being hooked on drugs for making a living on her 
back. At least she gets paid cash in advance. Why 
allow me to rescue you from the streets if this is 
how you choose to repay me?"

Mommy and Daddy are talking too loud at each 
other. I think they're angry, cause that's just how 
they sounded when I wrote on the wall with my 
crayons. I don't like for them to yell at each other. 
It scares me. Daddy goes away all the time. If he 
and Mommy stay mad at each other, maybe he'll 
go away again and not come back this time. I 
wish I could make them stop.
"What kind of thing is that to say? You didn't find 
me on any streets and you sure as hell didn't save 
me from them. And if you want to talk about 
repaying, I repaid you by being a devoted wife for 
five years."

"Devoted wife!? Devoted to what? To spending 
my money? To leeching off of me, because I was a 
fool with a conscience who was raised to pay for 
his mistakes?"

"Pay for his ... Look, Roland, I know you're angry 
and you want to hurt me, but trust me, I feel plenty 
bad already. You think I wanted this to happen? Do 
you have any idea how many nights I've spent in 
our bed alone, wondering why you seemed to want 
to be anywhere but there with me? Did you ever 
consider how it felt for me to be pushed into the 
background of your life?"

"That's a nice song and dance but still no excuse."

"You want an excuse, here's one for you. Five years 
of loneliness was enough. I needed to fill the void 
somehow."

Oh no, Mommy is starting to cry. Why don't they just 
kiss and make up? Why can't they be happy like the 
time we all went to the fair, and I got to go on a 
bunch of rides and eat cotton candy? That was my favorite 
day ever. Maybe if I ask them to take me to the fair today, 
they'll stop yelling and be happy again.
"You know the nature of my work," Roland said. "I 
have to put in a lot of hours. I need to visit the 
various plants and that means spending time on the 
road. If I didn't do these things I wouldn't be able to 
pay for this big roof that you wanted to be under so 
badly."

"What do you know about what I wanted? Did you 
ever once ask me?"

"I didn't have to, it was so obvious. You wanted a 
meal ticket. You wanted to land a man with a solid 
family background, a high paying respectable job, his 
and her cars in the garage, a pool in the backyard, and 
a stellar credit rating. That's what you wanted and 
that's what you got, all courtesy of me."

"No, what I wanted was a man who loves me and 
enjoys spending time with me," Janice said, fighting 
to hold her tears in check. "I wanted to be respected, 
to be listened to, to have passion in my life. What I 
got was a man unable to see through his inflated ego 
well enough to notice any creativity, or intellect, or 
ambition in his wife."

"Let's cut to the chase, Janice, and leave this 
feminist blather to Gloria Steinem. What you 
wanted was a white guy with some cash, and you 
hit pay dirt."

Mommy is shaking. She only does that when she's 
really really mad. My friend Louis told me that his 
dad yelled at his mom every night, so one day she 
packed all their stuff and they went to live with his 
grandma. I like my grandma cause she gives me 
quarters, but I don't want to live there because her 
house smells like cheese. And I'd miss Daddy.
"So it's come to that," Janice said icily.

"It's always been there."

"You want to make certain our marriage is 
irreconcilable, don't you?"

"No, you made sure of that when you slept with 
James. I can't forgive something like that. I deserve 
better than this. Better than you."

"You son of a bitch. I hate you so much."

"You don't know a damn thing about hate, Janice. 
Try being tricked into marrying someone you don't 
love, and being a father to a kid who probably isn't 
even yours. Try being taken for a fool by someone 
who drains your wallet, embarrasses you in front of colleagues, and fucks every Tom, Dick and Harry 
who happen by. Then you'll understand what hate is."

"I did better than that, Roland. I married a man who 
was hardly ever around, and who didn't satisfy me 
when he was. If you only could, I wouldn't have 
needed Tom, Dick, Harry or James."

Stop it! Why won't they stop fighting? Why did 
Daddy hit Mommy? He's not supposed to do that. 
They're not supposed to fight. Families are 
supposed to be happy, like on T.V.
"The truth hurts, doesn't it?" Janice asked, 
liberated more than wounded by the hand of her 
husband. "You can hit me all you want, but it won't 
make you any more of a man. You'll never measure 
up. You never did."

"I should have known better than to get involved 
with you in the first place. So I guess the blame is 
on me. You aren't any different than your sister. 
You've both spent your lives doing it for money. 
Even with the college degree I paid for you to get, 
you still haven't changed. I guess it was my mistake 
to think that you could. Once a nigger, always a 
nigger."

He left. Daddy went away and he didn't even say 
goodbye. What's going to happen now?
"Ricky, you must listen very carefully to me. We're 
going to be spending a few nights at Grandma's 
house, just you and Mommy. Won't that be nice? 
Grandma loves it so much when you come to visit. 
I want you to take your favorite clothes from the 
bureau and lay them out on your bed. I'll be up in 
a minute to help you pack."

"Mommy."

"Yes, sweetie."

"What's a nigger?"



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Thursday, June 15, 2017

Matters of Convenience - pictures to go with the words

                             
              


MATTERS OF CONVENIENCE


 
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Nothing felt better to him than the act of waiting for her. As long as he believed it wasn’t in vain, he was able to justify his presence.





They barely knew each other really. For God’s sake, it had been a struggle to remember her name. Still, he was well aware that the way he viewed his involvement with a woman sometimes did not match how she was seeing it.





Yet in truth she had succumbed to Todd the moment he introduced himself at a mutual friend’s cocktail party one week earlier, scanning her body in a microsecond with admiration while she lost her bearings in the confident intensity of his gaze.





On occasion he would think back to the fiercest passion it had been his pleasure to experience and reflect on what might have been. He would look upon the woman who occupied the opposite half of his bed and feel his life had not quite lived up to the promise of another day. These moments would be mercifully brief, or so was the hope.




His fierce appreciation of female beauty, the unrelenting desire he felt for their company, the pleasure he both derived and sought to give, had led him through quite a few bedroom doors.




Most people surrendered fairy tale hopes in exchange for cookie cutter lives. If a convincing image of happiness was presented to those looking in from the outside, success was claimed. But some opted for chaos at the expense of the facade of tranquility. 



No reasonable excuse or explanation occurred to her for declining his invitation. Her body craved to be explored by his touch. She longed to discover the places that would make him arch with pleasure, moan with delirium, hum her name in delight. Yet something made her suppress these urges, told her she must wait, that it was too soon. And although the source of these warnings was vague, she opted to obey them over desires that were far better understood.




And on some night in the probably not too distant future, nature would lead them to whichever of their bedrooms was closest at that moment. In this man’s arms, stretched out on either his bed sheets or her own, she would eliminate the final traces of Todd from her everyday consciousness. James would serve as diversion for a week, a month, however long she decided. It was almost as if she had willed him into existence, into standing before her at the precise moment she was willing to accommodate him, arriving not a minute too early or too late.




Once you break someone’s heart, you are forever its master. Calling him would be like voluntarily returning to servitude after freedom had been granted. She would not empower him to hurt her again. He didn’t deserve acknowledgment after shattering dreams she once thought were jointly held, only to learn that they were hers exclusively.



A few more minutes of stalling would not break her. She had the strength to stand there and love him right up to the moment he would possibly reveal that this was no longer in her best interest. He did not expect histrionics if his revelation was disappointing. She would not give him the satisfaction, would be stoic until showing him the door. Whatever happened once he was on the other side would be privileged information.



CDs were on their way to becoming historical the same as cassette tapes and eight tracks and records before them. Yet history had its place in a rapidly modernizing world. It reminded you of values to retain even while old fashioned commodities were discarded. Some things always were and always would be basically the same – like love for example.




Was she happy? She thought – yes, reasonably so. Then again, what was happiness but the vast terrain between ecstasy and agony? Was this too small an ambition?



Neither of them would grow distant nor feel regretful. There would be no uncomfortable silences. They would sit across the table from one another and converse naturally, at ease in each other’s company, letting their moment of tenderness linger. And although he recognized that tenderness was not the same as passion, and certainly not equivalent to love, for now it seemed to him a suitable substitute. 



Beyond that the locale did not make him think of her, nor did most things. He felt no negativity about the time they had spent together, but simply did not dwell on it much. She had been a seat filler, memorable as the smiling face of a beautiful girl in the window of a passing train, inspiring a fleeting moment of joy and promise, immediately forgotten with the opening of that day’s newspaper.




She was ravishing. This was plain to see as she lay on his bed, but her beauty had not bewitched him at first sight. He was preoccupied with trying to find his bearings in a new environment, haunted by the one hastily left behind.



Life was a swirl of mysteries, each one waiting to be plucked up and explored, but not necessarily solved.



What he did recognize was that a night of carnal merriment was his for the asking. The only requirement was to listen with minimal interruption as she spoke of herself. He tolerated her loquaciousness not because he was waiting out the stream of words until they led to her bedroom, but because he knew most people believed the minutiae of their lives to be far more interesting than it actually was, and on occasion he was willing to indulge them. After all, as a writer he was perpetually on the lookout for a new story.



 Or maybe happiness by definition was a temporary state of being recognizable only in hindsight. It was impossible to catch what always managed to be overrun and end up in the rear view mirror. Still, the only alternative to maintaining pursuit was surrender. She was no quitter, not even of her vices.



If Audrey sensed what he was contemplating, her silence did not let on. He turned from the window and found her looking at him with a flawless poker face. It may have been attentiveness and curiosity to hear what he would say next, or perhaps she was expecting from him what women throughout the ages, often against their better judgment, had expected of men.



His days had the grace of a butterfly in flight. Did a butterfly consider itself to be blessed? Was it ever wistful? If not for its earliest days as a caterpillar then perhaps for the time in between when cocooned from peril, when all was comfort and peace and security?



Part of him hated the thought of it, another part was selfishly grateful that her ordeal had drawn them closer.



No matter what percentage fact and what percentage fiction his characters were comprised of, they all shared a crucial quality. They acted as he willed them to. They each fell into the arms of the lover he selected for them. If only he could compel the real life woman he had chosen into his arms.


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Those are a few bites of the story. For the full meal, Matters of Convenience is available at Amazon in print, Kindle and audio formats. Happy reading!
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