Anna, Babette, and Charlie or Why She's Late -- Flash Fiction

A 1900s postcard from Zazzle

The girls had their showers and bath last night before bed. Anna and Babette take showers these days. Charlie still takes baths.

We are scheduled to eat a late lunch with Neil's mother then sit for a family portrait in front of the Christmas tree.

I reminded Anna, my thirteen-year-old going on 20, of our departure time as she disappeared into her room. We had agreed that she would wear her new blue dress. Her first dry-clean-only dress. Nothing would do, but she have that exact one. And she did look lovely in it. She's a rather fastidious child so it seemed an acceptable choice.

"Babette, have you decided what you're wearing?"

"The white one with blue stars," she shouts over her shoulder as she plunks down on the couch next to her dad.

At eleven, Babette is the athlete/artist in the family. She couldn't care less what she wears as long as it's not "too girlie." I'm never quite sure just what "too girlie" is. Pink is fine. Flounces around the hem are fine. Ruffles at the neckline are not fine. "Too girlie." White with stars is perfectly fine for the portrait, but she is not a careful child. Not with her art supplies or eating. I don't know why Neil's mother planned a portrait sitting for AFTER lunch. I'm tempted to take a spare outfit for her. Babette, not Neil's mother.

Charlie (Charlotte MacKenzie) the baby of the family loves clothes. That child can change clothes more times in a day than the Crawleys on Downton Abbey. I decided to wait until the last minute to dress her.

"Mom," Anna calls. "I can't find my blue tights."

I poke my head into her room, the cat and Charlie close on my heels. "When did you wear them last?" I ask.

"Tuesday."

"Then, they're probably in the dirty clothes. Did you look?"

"Can you wash them?" She asks.

Might as well, throw in Neil's dark colored dress shirts. My dad was a welder, so he never wore dress shirts unless it was to a wedding or a funeral. Somehow, it always seemed kind of fun to wash Neil's "work" shirts. Almost like I was a kid playing house. Fancy house. But they had to be taken out of the dryer as soon as it finished or they'd wrinkle, and neither he nor I like to iron.

"Babette, do you need anything washed before school tomorrow?"

She races past me down the hall and into her room. The cat and Charlie flatten themselves against the wall.

All calm and in control she steps into the hall and hands me her soccer uniform. "Thanks, Mom. I almost forgot."

Thank goodness her team colors are blue and grey. They'll wash just fine with her sister's tights and Neil's shirts. But they're another have-to-take-them-out-of-the-dryer-quick.

Not a problem. I've got time.

Neil passed the laundry room on his way to our bathroom. "Gonna take my shower now."

"Okay," I say rummaging through the dirty clothes to find Anna's tights.

I hear the shower start and thank goodness for the new water heater. We haven't run out of hot water since we got it.

"Gloria, Hon, I forgot to get a towel."

"Just a minute," I say interrupting my search for the tights. "Charlie, don't let the cat get in the dryer."

I get Neil a towel, find the tights, and start the washer. Charlie and the cat have disappeared and I can't hear them over the washer and Neil's singing. He always sings in the shower. Opera, usually. He actually sounds pretty good when he limits himself to the baritone parts. Not so much when he does all the roles. But he enjoys it.

The dishwasher is finished so I put the dishes away. That's when I heard the most mournful yowl. Having survived two girls as toddlers, I knew I'd better see what Charlie had done to the cat. It wasn't in the dryer. I checked.

I knew they weren't in Charlie's bedroom because the door was wide open. My next guess was the hall bathroom.

"Charlie, have you got the cat in there with you?"

There was much scrabbling going on and things falling on the other side of the door.

"Charlotte, why is the door locked? Open the door."

Nothing. The hall bathroom had gone silent. Neil burst into his falsetto soprano part.

"Charlotte MacKenzie Smith. Open this door. NOW!"

Charlie opened the door and a wet cat streaked past me, sliding as he made the turn to tear down the hall. The four-year-old stood there, shoulders hunched, eyes huge in terror, her mouth puckered in an O.

"He's wet! He's all over my stuff!" Anna screeched from her bedroom.

Charlie was soaked. Toiletries lay scattered across the flooded bathroom floor. The picture of the young man tap dancing in New Orleans hung askew and the wall clock was practically upside down.

Babette peeked out of her door, took one look at me, then ducked out of sight.

"Babette, you come back here. Bring me a towel and take one to Anna."

"Yes, ma'am," she said sidling carefully past me.

Tears began trickling down Charlie's face. She didn't move. She didn't even blink. She waited for retribution of biblical proportions.

The shower in my bathroom stopped and Neil called, "Did you get deodorant for me? I can't find it."

"The cat walked on my library book," Anna wailed. "He's ruining it!"

Babette offered me two towels.

"No. Take one to Anna and tell her to dry the cat. Then you come back here and dry your sister."

"But ...." she started to object. After another look at me, she thought better of it.

"Thank you," Neil said as I removed the new can of deodorant from the top shelf in the medicine cabinet, less than an arm's length from him, and handed it to him.

"You're welcome," I said.

"Are the girls about ready to go?" he asked.

I didn't answer. How could he not hear the four-year-old down the hall, sobbing? Her big sister making soothing sounds.

I got the mop bucket out of the garage and sopped up the water on the bathroom floor, straightened the picture and the clock, and dried the toiletries before replacing them on the shelf. At least the cat hadn't knocked the shelf down or ripped the shower curtain in his wild careening around the room.

It wasn't until after I'd put the laundry into the dryer that I calmed down enough to wonder whether or not my youngest had been maimed by the near-drowned cat. But there hadn't been blood in the water on the floor, so I figured she must be fine or at least fine enough.

"How do I look?" Neil asked smoothing his tie. He was freshly showered, deodorized, shaved, and dressed in a white shirt and his navy pinstriped suit pants.

"You're barefoot," I said.

"Couldn't find any blue socks," he said.

"Wear black," I said.

It wasn't until then that he actually looked at me.

"Is something wrong?"

"No. Nothing is wrong. Now."

"Okay," he said cautiously. "I think I'll go clean out the car,"

Anna and Babette got themselves dressed and ready to go. Anna without her blue tights. I'll run the laundry again when we get home. Charlotte MacKenzie is dressed and I put a change of clothes in her Elsa backpack. If Babette spills food on her dress, we'll just turn it around back-to-front for the photo.

We're out of hot water and I've still got to shower. I have no idea where the cat's got to.

My husband sits on the couch reading the paper. His three beautiful daughters perched all lady-like around him watching "Meet the Press" or some such on TV as though they're interested. He checks his watch, waiting all too obviously patiently. He doesn't dare ask how much longer I'll be.

Introduction to Poetry or Why I Am Not an English Teacher

No! Wait! Oh, my goodness. I don't know where to start.

I know you think you don't like poetry.

It's too foo-foo -- a fuzzy poodle clipped into topiary.

It's too obscure, too much naval-gazing. No one, besides the poet who wrote it, can understand it. Or, for that matter, gives a frak.

And even people who like poetry, don't like this modern stuff. Half the time it doesn't even rhyme.

Beginning in elementary school, I wrote poetry. Even got some of it published. Had to give up the getting published part though. Too expensive.

That was in the days before cell phones when you had to pay long distance to call any prefix outside your area code and even most inside it. The phone prefix in the U.S. is the three numbers immediately following the area code. (For those of you too young to remember, prefixes once had names like Windsor which was dialed 946 and Melrose 635, etc. In old movies phone numbers began with the prefix 555, because there was no prefix 555 and that just gave one less reason to get sued. Some things don't change.)

Also, if your poem were published, payment generally consisted of two free copies of the issue your poem appeared in.

All this meant that if my poem was published, I had to pay long distance to call all my friends and relatives to tell them the good news. AND buy extra copies of the issue my poem appeared in, because I had friends and relatives who wanted to see it themselves. Then there was the expense of snail mail because not all my friends and relatives lived within easy driving distance.

But I digress.

You notice I said I gave up the getting published part. The writing of poetry I continued for a very long time. It was my way of understanding myself and the chaotic world I lived in. I read other people's poetry for the same reason.

A good poet pays attention to each word, asking if that word is the right word. A good poem, while it uses the exact word, also leaves room for the reader to bring to it their own experience. Room to understand the poem in their own way.

When I went to college, I thought I wanted to be an English teacher. I loved poetry and prose in all their forms, rhymed, free verse, form poems, fiction, nonfiction, plays. I would be surrounded by literature. I would spend my days sharing what I loved with my students. Lunch conversations would expand my own reading opportunities by exploring the literature my fellow teachers read and loved. What better way for me to make my living? And I would have time to write.

Life and reality changed everything. I eventually got to within something like four credit hours of a teaching degree in English. And I couldn't face the possibility of a lifetime of lunches with English teachers.

That said, let me share with you a poem by Billy Collins, who was an English teacher. Probably the kind of English teacher I would enjoy having lunch with. He is described by Wikipedia as "a Distinguished Professor of English." Among many prizes, awards, and honors, he was Poet Laureate of the United States 2001 - 2003.

Introduction to Poetry 

by Billy Collins

                                     I ask them to take a poem
                                     and hold it up to the light
                                     like a color slide

                                     or press an ear against its hive.

                                     I say drop a mouse into a poem
                                     and watch him probe his way out,

                                     or walk inside the poem’s room
                                     and feel the walls for a light switch.

                                     I want them to waterski
                                     across the surface of a poem
                                     waving at the author’s name on the shore.

                                     But all they want to do
                                     is tie the poem to a chair with rope
                                     and torture a confession out of it.

                                     They begin beating it with a hose
                                     to find out what it really means.


And that, dear friends, is why I am not an English teacher.