Illustration by Ekaterina Demyanovskaya / Dreamstime
I’m looking across the bar, over the rim of my second glass of Sauvignon Blanc, when I see my ex-fiancé’s mom, Jenny. I had been contemplating a third, but I now feel something heavy and slick settling inside me.
She is looking down at her iPhone with a Maker’s Mark Old Fashioned in one hand. I know that it’s Maker’s Mark because that’s what Scott, her husband, would use for his own cocktails at holiday parties. Whenever I would come over and be enveloped in the warmth of a picturesque family, the wide granite kitchen counters and long, rich mahogany walls. The piano by the front entrance with its well-used keys waiting for someone’s touch to bring it all to life. I didn’t mind that they often played old hymns. The depth and richness of such a piano was beautiful enough.
Jenny sips her drink, oblivious to me. I wonder if she still owns the purple dress she wore last New Year’s. Alex passes in front of me with an already open bottle of Marlborough Valley. “More juice?”
Alex calls whatever you’re drinking “juice.” I think Alex is cute. I think this and am floored by the well of guilt that rises up at thinking Alex is cute while sitting four seats apart from Jenny. It has been eight months now. It didn’t start as a break-up, but when Kim had called a few months ago to ask if she could return my dead mother’s ring, it seemed settled enough. I knew from the area code that she was calling from the landline of her parents’ Antebellum mansion.
“Yes please,” I say to Alex. We have gone out twice now. She pours the wine while I watch how the veins along her thin forearm ripple under the black ink of an intricate tattoo.
Jenny looks up. I see it out of my peripheral vision and turn my head towards her. It’s an automatic response to look at her when she speaks. As if she had been my own mother.
We watch each other. Jenny’s eyes sharpen on me at once, glancing at Alex. She is old Southern wealth and will not stand for causing a scene. Her highlight-infused hair looks soft in the orange halo of the bar lights.
“Hi,” I say.
“Jessica.” She had once told me that the reason my parents died young had nothing to do with my sins or God’s plan. Sometimes awful things happen to His creations, she had said.
I ran that phrase “His creations” over and over my tongue that night as I lay in bed with Kim in our apartment in the city. Mouthing it, feeling it on my lips and noting at which syllables they brushed each other. His? Which parts of this mouth were created? Which parts of me had I chiseled out myself?
“Maker’s Mark?” I ask. She doesn’t follow. “The Old Fashioned. It’s Maker’s Mark?”
“Oh. Yes, it is.”
Sometimes in my studio apartment I will wake up while it’s still dark, never checking the time. I’ll pick dirty socks off the floor and hand wash a couple dishes and straighten the pillows on the futon. When Kim told me she couldn’t do it, I had told her almost too quickly that I understood. What she’d meant was that they couldn’t do it. Her family. Still alive. Still lovely. They couldn’t handle a lesbian for a daughter. And Kim accepted their love through this limitation, and I understood that I would not be invited back for Christmas dinner. That Jenny would not stand beside me, her daughter’s “roommate,” in the kitchen washing dishes and talking about dead people, about forgiveness.
“Jessica, I want you to know that Kim is very happy. She is doing well,” she pauses to check her illuminated iPhone screen. “I have prayed that.”
“That’s all right.”
“We understand that girls get confused.” Alex is watching us now as she polishes the rim of a Collins glass. I swallow my wine and stand to pull my jacket off the back of the barstool. I take out my wallet to pay.
“I know you all really love each other,” I say.
Jenny hesitates before nodding slightly. Walking to the door, I am tempted to look back. I am so tempted to go to Alex and have her hold me, to have Jenny see the harmlessness of my dirty, sinfully broken heart.
Instead, I light a cigarette and walk home in the wind on Christmas Eve.
Rachel E. Layton is a senior English major at the University of Memphis. Born and raised in Memphis, she has published works of poetry in online literary magazines such as Crash Test Mag and Minerva Rising. She is currently planning to graduate with a BFA in English literature and German language in May 2020 before pursuing a master’s in creative writing.
SHORT AND SWEET (or not-so-sweet), the Very Short Story Contest welcomes entries of up to 750 words, maximum. Writers are encouraged to incorporate the city into their work. Winning stories are published in Memphis and archived on memphismagazine.com. The Very Short Story Contest recognizes ten winning entries annually, every month except February and August. The contest is presented by Novel, Memphis’ newest independent bookstore, where each winning author will be honored with a $200 gift certificate. To submit: fiction@memphismagazine.com
