Flash Fiction #1: A Certain Lack
As promised, the first piece of flash fiction! Please comment with feedback/suggestions/questions like wtf was I thinking, if you’re so inclined. More of these to come. Enjoy!
Lack.
That was the word Caroline finally settled on for how’d she’d been feeling. The other day at lunch, Myrna had insisted it was depression, no matter how much Caroline protested. Then, Myrna said she was in denial, so there was really no winning. In the end, she’d taken her friend’s proffered bottle of Prozac at the end of their time together. She’d stuffed the bottle, prescription label still attached with Myrna’s late husband’s name on it, into her purse. And there it remained.
As she cradled her coffee cup in both hands for security and stared out the window at the bird feeder that had been empty of seed for… well, how long had it been since Liam left? Three weeks maybe? “It’s understandable, being depressed, with what you’re going through,” is how Myrna had put it. As if depression after a spouse of 25 years departs was a foregone conclusion.
It was the bird feeder that made her realize it. Lack. The feeder had lacked food for so long, the birds stopped bothering to flit by and check it. So her yard lacked birds or any other animate life she could see from her view through the window.
Strangely, her new lack of a husband isn’t what spawned this feeling. Liam’s leaving was a side effect. Caroline got the sense that, if she concentrated, maybe she could drum up some sadness at his absence, but it hardly seemed worth the effort.
She noticed he was gone, here and there throughout the day, in mundane things that were not. His muddy hiking shoes were not by the front door. His aging Audi was not in the driveway. His side of the bed was not in the cosmic chaotic disarray in which his fitful sleeping habits left it. She noticed these things, but she could not say they spawned sadness. They didn’t make her feel anything, really.
The truth is, this Lack, which she had just now started to think of as worth a capital letter, had been around for…years…decades? before Liam left. If anything, the Lack may have been why he left, but in any case, Lack certainly pre-existed Leaving. Lack of interest, lack of connection, lack of sex. The kids had been gone from the house two years before Liam seemed to notice it. She remembered the day.
They’d been sitting on the couch in front of a movie Caroline wasn’t really watching. She was only sitting there out of habit; he had turned it on. She had felt his eyes on her and when she turned, a look of surprise had sprung up on his face, as if the Lack had tapped him on the shoulder and cleared it’s throat for attention. His eyes said, Oh! Hers just stared back.
It took him another year to actually walk out the door. He was slow that way. She’d always been able to see what he was going to do months in advance, his path laid visibly bare before her, though it was opaque to him. Or so she thought. She had to admit, she was no longer sure she knew him all that well. Lack. Of knowing.
So when Liam said, “I need some time,” when he said, “to figure things out,” when he said, “I’m going to stay at Lawrence’s for a while,” and when that, several months later, turned into an apartment for which he signed a year lease, she was not shocked. She only thought, finally. And let out a breath she seemed to have been holding for ten years.
When Myrna told Caroline she’d seen Liam holding hands with Mandy Fourier, the realtor, in front of Saver’s, she only thought, of course. She knew he couldn’t be alone for long. It wasn’t in his nature. That’s why her Lack bothered him so much. Lack of conversation, lack of dinner parties, lack of life. Myrna could be an asshole sometimes.
As Caroline continued her window staring, through the lifeless backyard and into her past, she contemplated. It’d be nice to look back on the past 50 years and lament unrealized dreams of being an artist or some shit, but she’d never had that kind of ambition. She’d gone from one thing to the next: school, college, job, marriage, kids, return to work…until she got here and discovered the defined timeline had suddenly run out. There were no more pre-defined steps to take. Just like the birds that were not there in her yard, that had come regularly to the feeder — like commuters to downtown jobs — until the food ran out, setting the birds adrift in the ether. Though she knew that was not true. Not for the birds, who would always have other feeders, damn them.
Caroline wished she were depressed. She longed to feel something besides Lack. Even anger or anxiety would do. She sighed as she thought this, still staring out at the bare trees and no-birds, dead-grass backyard. She gazed down into her mug and could tell the coffee’d gone cold without even lifting it to her lips. She set it down on the wobbly end table that had been unstable for the entirety of her memory of it. That cup would stay there until she picked it up because Liam wasn’t there to be obsessive about clutter and complain about her mess, as if it mattered at all. This thought brought the right corner of her mouth upward, a sensation she realized, with distant curiosity, was related to feelings of…not happiness exactly, but perhaps…smugness.
And so she wandered down the stairs into the basement, as she often did these days when feelings like this arose, hoping to fan the flicker of something other than Lack into a flame. The round thermometer set into the deep freeze’s dirty off-white lid showed a reassuring 18 degrees Fahrenheit. She used both hands to pry the lid loose of its seal, wisps of cold vapor hitting her torso.
There was Liam, just as she had left him, safely frozen amongst the absurd piles of deer meat in sealed plastic packages — evidence of his attempt at hunting. A friend had shot this particular deer. Liam had been frustrated by his inability. She’d seen it coming, but had said nothing about his Lack. It occurred to her, she perhaps should’ve wrapped Liam in the same sort of vacuum sealed plastic, but she didn’t imagine he’d mind a little freezer burn now.
As she gazed down on his frost covered body, her smirk turned into a full smile. She hadn’t planned it. When he’d returned home to collect his bike — one of a pair they’d bought back when they were younger and more athletic, back when they’d done things together and laughed while they were doing them — she’d had the impulsive thought she’d be happier if he weren’t so… around. Even out of the house, he seem to exude her Lack. Lack of athleticism, of sense of adventure. He’d always said she should be more spontaneous — something else she’d lacked. She’d been chopping vegetables; the knife was already in her hand. It was serendipitous.
His quiet, confinement to the freezer reassured her, relaxed her. He was so much easier this way, to keep content and unobtrusive. Suddenly, staring down into the freezer, she felt something insider her lift. The Lack began to dissipate. Perhaps Myrna was right. Maybe she had been depressed.
The following are my thoughts and questions for the story. If you have a few moments to give constructive feedback in the comments, I would appreciate it!
NOTES:
This story seems to be about a woman’s lack as reflected in her husband. He wants her to be things she is not, which is why when he’s gone, really gone, the lack dissipates. She is also not very well-versed in her own feelings.
Myrna is that vulture sort of friend who loves tragedy, drama and controversy but thinly veils it in shows of sympathy.
Caroline is also a product of culture — what you’re “supposed” to do. She’s never thought beyond having a family. She’s been trained to see herself as what she can do or be for others. She did not used lack feelings this way, but she has become dulled — withdrawn from Liam because he makes her feel unworthy. She withdraws from judgment.
Caroline is like an extreme version of the Rachel character (reference to a work-in-progress I may finish one day).
QUESTIONS:
Does this story need more about Caroline’s role as a mother?
Does it need more about how her job makes her feel? A lack there? Or perhaps a contrast — coworkers who respect her professional abilities?
Maybe it needs more about Liam and what kind of person or spouse he was.
Great Read April !!
Might be good to include Caroline's child-rearing history ( to maybe illuminate the person she is / a part of her experience in life that helped "get her to where she is" ...
:)