Another one from the box

I know I should be working on Blackberry Summer, but I’m having so much fun going through these old stories. I had forgotten I wrote some of them. This one appeared in The Iconoclast in 2001. At the time I was trying my hand at flash fiction. The Box came in at around 1100 words, a snapshot of a marriage at its crisis point. All these years later I see room for improvement, but at the time saying anything with less than 3,000 words was huge for me

The Box

On the morning of his fortieth birthday, Scott O’Bryan found the box. Old and scuffed, it would have been invisible had his wife not hidden it inside another box. Metal, with a flimsy dollar-store padlock. He pulled it out of the closet and opened it. Thirteen years of Larry’s postcards lay nestled in yellowed newspaper. He fanned the postcards out, like a deck of playing cards in his hands, and wondered what Deana had meant by saving them.

He went down to breakfast, thinking of the latest postcard, one that had arrived last week, from Barbados. The one he threw in the trash. He remembered how he’d pictured himself and Deana, rather than the pretty, plastic people on the postcard, laying on a blanket beside a turquoise beach. Wishing they were there. (Larry had actually written that.) He found a mean little sense of satisfaction in the fact that he hadn’t shown it to her. That her collection was one postcard short.

He took his place at the breakfast table, took note of the sullen way in which Deana sat, eyes closed against the morning sun. He buttered a slice of toast, ignoring the sourness in his stomach and the tent that was being erected in his back yard.

“What’s wrong, Dee?” he asked.

“The tent’s wrong.”

“The tent’s fine.”

“It’s huge. It looks like a huge red toadstool.” Then, as if it had been all his idea, “This party is turning into a migraine.”

“You’re right. Let’s not have it.”

She glared at him. “I’ve invited sixty people.”

“So un-invite them.” He drained his coffee cup. “Tell them I died or something.”

“Oh, brilliant, professor. We’ll tell them you died.” As she dumped the rest of the coffee pot into his cup, a dark pool sloshed over onto the table. “You never appreciate anything I try to do for you.”

“I’d rather not have sixty people around to watch as I go over the hill,” he said stiffly. “I think I told you that.”

“How do you think I feel?”

“About what?”

“Nothing. Here.” She shoved a list across the table.  “Run to the store for me, will you? I’ve got a million things to do.”

“That sounded like a shot at my age.”

“Don’t be so sensitive.”

Sensitive. He shoved the list into his pocket, remembering when sensitive was a good thing. The night they’d sat in his car on Louck’s Hill Road. The night Larry didn’t marry her.

You’re so sensitive, Scott. How can you be so sensitive when your brother is such a jerk?

He’d watched as her tears tumbled into warm champagne. She’d been shattered. A beautiful, broken doll he couldn’t stop mending. Sorrow and salt. Satin and pearls. He’d wanted it all. She’d made him crazy. Crazy enough not to care that he was her second choice.

When he returned from the store, the bathroom door was closed. He hovered outside, testing the air.

“I’m back,” he announced.

“Did you get everything?”

“Yes. Can I come in?”

She was putting on lotion. Honeysuckle. He slid his arms around her, his hands lingering on her breasts.  She pushed him away. “I told you, I’ve got a million things to do.”

“I’ll be quick.”

 Her short bark of laughter stopped him cold. He hated when she made him feel inadequate. It wasn’t just sex. It was the money he didn’t make. The extravagant vacations he couldn’t afford. This house she’d had to have and then hated within a year.

It was the same year she’d started hating the house that Larry’s postcards had started coming. From Spain. Hawaii. Niagara Falls, New York. She pretended not to care about them, but for days after receiving one, Scott would find himself on the wrong side of a locked door. Until she’d gotten over them. Until she’d forgiven him for not being Larry.

At six o’clock she found him on the porch, drinking vodka and staring at the tent.

“You’re not drinking already, are you?”

“No.”

“You should go,” she said. “They’ll be here any minute.”

He drove through town, seeing only boxes. The box on Elm he’d grown up in. The box at Maple and Third where he worked. The one on Princeton where he’d married Deana, at twenty- four. Now he was forty. Forty. Still wanting the things he’d wanted then. The things he had. Yesterday he’d thought that made him a success.

“Surprise!”

He pasted on a smile and stared into the faces of his friends. He wondered if he’d ever known them. An hour in, half drunk and feeling mean, he wandered away from the party. Sick. Tired. Sick and tired of being careful not to talk too much about his work or his hobby, collecting vintage comic books, or anything else that might embarrass Deana. He gazed at the neat rows of houses beyond the fence. More boxes. He wondered how he’d come to be here, and what had made him think he wanted this. Deana found him and coaxed him back to the buffet.

“So, Scotty,” someone boomed. “what do you hear from Larry these days?”

Deana stiffened beside him. He thought of the shoe box she’d hidden in the closet. For the first time in sixteen years, he wanted to hurt her.

“He’s in Barbados. On his honeymoon, believe it or not. He finally got married.” His eyes slid to his wife’s stricken face as the news rippled through the tent.

“I didn’t know Larry sent a postcard,” she whispered.

“I didn’t show it to you. I didn’t think you’d care.”

“I don’t.” She dumped her half-filled plate into a nearby trash can and hurried to the house.

At midnight he stood alone by the bonfire, watching Deana’s shadow move across the bedroom wall. All of the vodka in Russia could not have dulled his fear. Watching Deana’s shadow. Knowing it could go either way. Knowing it would be decided tonight. When she came outside, moments later, she was carrying the box. He watched her cross the yard, his heart hammering in his chest.

“What’s in the shoe box, Dee?” he asked softly.

“Shoes.” She carried it to the fire, hugged it briefly, and threw it on. “Old shoes. What did you think?”

“Why did you save them all these years?” His voice cracked. “What did you need them for?”

“You’re being silly, Scott.” She reached for his hand. “Come inside.”

He pulled his hand free, wiped at his eyes, the trickle of mucus that had settled in the divet beneath his nose. “Larry didn’t get married.”

“I know.”

“Do you love me anyway?”

“Scotty, you’re drunk. Come to bed.”

She reached for his hand again. The bonfire popped and hissed behind him as she gently led him back inside.