Excerpt from short story 'Good Dining'

We were sitting in the middle of that old park on Fayette Street, (I could never remember the name) the one opposite the Merrill-Lynch building, and I was worried. It was the height of summer and it was hot and sticky. It always was at this time of year, but it felt different. The park seemed to groan around us as the slightest breeze worked its way around, temporarily relieving the suffocating dampness all around us. It should have relaxed me I guess, but instead in that moment I felt terribly cold and it seemed that I was not alone. The leaves hissed, almost curled in contempt and they burned their darkest green, in seeming retaliation to the brief change. Their sudden movement caused the bright mid-afternoon sun to come piercing through in fleeting diamond-shaped shards that jabbed and sliced across shaded areas beneath the trees; daggers I thought to myself as they fell across my face and burnt spots that had been cold just moments before.

The heat was rising in shimmering waves off trash cans, car bonnets, the still water in the fountain pool and I was still worried, because something about the day was not right.

I really can’t tell you how long we stayed like that; my mother swaying slightly, her head bowed, the edges of her apron flittering on the occasional breeze, and me, lost in a trance of my own, trying to make sense of the situation. Then something pulled me out, still I can’t quite pinpoint what it was. Something familiar in the distance called like the whistle of a far-away train borne on a chilly autumn wind. You don’t really hear it, but it registers and fills you with quiet longing.

Then I realized that my mother was humming.

We’d been in that very position for I don’t know how long, but it had clearly been for quite some time. It was just before dusk and the waning evening sun painted an abstract cityscape across the Merrill Lynch building in virulent red, purple, gold and orange and still she swayed, softly singing. There, on the strangled words of her song: “way by and by”, realization painstakingly unfurled; stinging-nettle fighting to awaken from its dew-laden sleep in the pale peach light of dawn.


Life - It ain't easy but it sweet!