Ah, the magic of deadlines. Much of what I'm paying so much money for in grad school -- to have someone give me a date when a story is due and have a classroom of people relying on that date. A piece of my latest below. The workshop that I'm handing this in for, like no other I've been in, is anything but supportive. Much of the reason I signed up. A secret wish for someone to tear apart my work, make my worst fears come true, and maybe help me actually get somewhere.
On the day of the wedding, Diane kept the curling iron hot all morning. Her two daughters each had to have their hair set if the day was to get off on the right foot. She curled the little one’s hair first. If the little girl didn’t like the curl, she frowned and raked it flat and told her mother to do it again. Diane was impatient from the start. She pulled the hair tight around the hot iron, tugged a little too hard so that her daughter had to fight to hold her head straight. Once the little girl was satisfied with each curl, she let Diane spray it. Diane held her hand up to block the spray from getting in the little girl’s eyes but the bathroom filled with grayish-blue clouds of fumes and choked them both.
She sent the little girl off and called for Lila. Lila was her eldest daughter, her teenager. Their first mistake, Paul had called Lila once. Diane drizzled water on the wand of the hot curling iron and watched the drops sizzle then dissolve. She avoided her own reflection in the mirror because it had a way of pulling her in, of making her look. If she caught a shadow or a corner of it, she had to see the whole thing and then it drew her closer, until she was close enough to feel her breath coming back at her off the glass and judge her skin for every bump and pore and follicle.
Lila refused to enter the bathroom until Diane completely removed herself from it, which she did readily, in no mood for a fight. The girl gave the door a swift slam as Diane exited sending a draft of cool air up the hem of Diane’s bathrobe. Paul would be here in less than an hour to pick them up.
Diane did her own hair quickly. She teased the whole thing straight up, sprayed it, stuck a flower in it and tried not to think about it. Her youngest daughter yelled up the stairs to report that Nicholas was not eating his breakfast. Diane came down in her stockings and slip to find Nicholas pouring the contents of his cereal bowl into the dog’s mouth. When the dog bent to lick a spot of milk, Nicholas would splash more out of the bowl to get the dog’s attention. The dog was intent on catching anything new that fell out of the bowl and at the same time, desperate to get everything that had already fallen on the floor, the result of which was a rapt frenzy, the dog licking in all directions at once, a fervent state of indecision and desperation. His mother’s appearance had little affect on Nicholas other than to make him pour faster. Diane growled and went for the boy. He dumped the rest of the cereal on the dog’s head, dropped the bowl on the floor and ran out of the room. Diane stepped in a puddle of milk, felt a Cheerio flatten under the ball of her foot.
