Driveway                                               Sherrie Flick                                                                  

 

 

The tiny dog sleeps on the couch. Electricity runs from Stephanie’s eyeballs to her elbows to her wrists and back. The coffee steams. A second batch of toast pops up; she eats it with sugar this time. Not saying the words. Just thinking the words. And the cat has peed on the backroom's floor, but not in the living room, for instance.

 

Stephanie presses her fingers into her eyes and rolls, rolls the eyeballs until they hurt, but that's the pleasure. The pleasure of not stopping. And so she repeats it, pressing in.

 

This morning the car smells of weed. It's so easy to expect an apology. Not apologizing is the real skill. Stephanie puts the car back into park, recoups in the kitchen. The hum of radio of internet of computer of clock radio—daylight savings time screwing everything up again.

 

And then it’s 3am reading in a rocking chair, blanket snared around her. Flipping pages. Eyes crossing, but. Just. One. More. Page. And where is the risk in this? What about wandering around the neighborhood? Breaking into some houses, Stephanie thinks. Doing some damage. Ah, now there's risk. Like driving around in a car smoking pot. The car called "wheels" the weed called "a blunt." This language of youth raging toward an obsolescent future. 

 

In the morning the bread remains delicious. Stephanie eats one more round of toast with homemade jam. There is so much goodness to try to pay attention to. The dog wears a little sweater, for instance. The old furnace clanks to life.

 

When asked what she’s like Stephanie says without pausing: I am a woman standing with an umbrella at a bus stop. I’m waiting patiently, my weight distributed evenly on both feet. The umbrella held carefully, but confidently aloft. I don't fidget; just wait. Patiently.

 

A breeze blows scattered political pamphlets down the street. The book remains half-read. The world tip tips as Stephanie walks, crouching to make things straight again. Stephanie is missing one teenager. Where could he have gone?

 

People get angry. The anger feels good for a moment. At its peak it's a bowl of ice cream, and then everything goes to hell. The radio's pop music disguised as indie music disguised as new music keeps playing in the background.

 

Stephanie thinks: What do I remember? Answer: Wall to wall carpeting. Comfort. Popcorn. The Encyclopedia Britannica. TV. Junkfood. Ease. Stretching into days. And not one person yelling for years and years.

 

Stephanie takes those memories apart screw by screw on days like this, because surely boredom is the only thing worse than risk. Surely, that's how she learned to rise above redemption.

 

Stephanie rinses her plate. Later, she travels down a series of one-way streets, looking for an easy turn around.

 

 

 

 

Sherrie Flick is the author of the flash fiction chapbook I Call This Flirting and the novel Reconsidering Happiness. Her fiction appears in many journals and anthologies including Norton’s Flash Fiction Forward and New Sudden Fiction. She lives in Pittsburgh, where she teaches in Chatham University’s MFA program.