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120 pages

English

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Fiercely conflicting urges animate the characters in Family Impromptu, a provocative, engaging collection of short stories that challenge and entertain as they reveal the peculiar way we both create and resist family life.In these captivating stories, we encounter the tangle of emotions that accompany close relationships. Marriages expand and contract, love seeks fulfillment in a library, children dream of stalkers and kidnappings, dead dogs reconnect partners, and a cousin gets executed in Texas. Poignant, humorous, and even unsettling at times, this collection takes a frank look at the complicated yet endearing jumble of family ties as characters pursue both intimacy and independence.

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Short story

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Publié par	Distributed by eBookpartnership
Date de parution	01 mars 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781839784460
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

‘Exquisite description of life’s surprises as we wrestle with familial love and loss.’
Steven E. Sanderson, scholar and novelist, Epitaph for Sorrows.
‘Family Impromptu illuminates the quirky combinations of connection and rebellion that make up all families—beyond the binaries of happiness and unhappiness.’
Laurie L. Patton, professor, poet, and president of Middleburry College

FAMILY IMPROMPTU:
COLLECTED STORIES
Rosemary M. Magee

Family Impromptu: Collected Stories
Published by The Conrad Press in the United Kingdom 2022
Tel: +44(0)1227 472 874 www.theconradpress.com info@theconradpress.com
ISBN 978-1-839784-46-0
Copyright © Rosemary M. Magee, 2022
The moral right of Rosemary M. Magee to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
All of the characters and circumstances in these collected stories are entirely fictitious.
These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, and events are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Typesetting and Cover Design by: Charlotte Mouncey, www.bookstyle.co.uk
The Conrad Press logo was designed by Maria Priestley.
Publications acknowledgements
‘Arthur, My Cousin,’ Eclipse ; ‘Double Helix,’ Atlanta Magazine ; finalist for story contest, Fiction Magazine ; ‘Extinction,’ Iron Horse Literary Review ; ‘Fantasy Impromptu,’ Euphony ; ‘Free Radicals,’ The Distillery ; ‘Making Out,’ Fine Print ; prize winner, Authors in the Park Contest; ‘Quantum Entanglement,’ EDGE ; Pushcart nominee; ‘Spectacular Lies,’ Porcupine Literary Arts Magazine ; ‘Suchness,’ Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine .

Dedicated to Ron Grapevine, dearest husband, whose good cheer and constancy embrace me, always.

‘I do think that families are the most beautiful things in all the world.’
Louise May Alcott, Little Women
‘All our roots go deep down, even if they’re tangled.’
Naomi Shihab Nye, Habibi

Double helix
I know a woman who is in love with my husband. I’m jealous of her. I’m jealous of her because she feels this way about him. He seems oblivious to her intentions and emotions, or at least that’s the way he acts around me. I want him to want her the way that she wants him. I know this is not the way it’s meant to be. I know I’m supposed to resent their attentions to one another. But I like contemplating her feelings for him. It helps me recollect the pre-conditions of love.
The two of them are working on a research project together, so sometimes she comes over to our house in the evenings. We are just finishing dinner. The children have gone outside to play. I invite her to sit down at the kitchen table. She asks about my work. I have colourful finger paint smeared across my clothing from the rowdy classroom of preschoolers that I oversee three days a week. We have nothing in common – except my husband. She is a quiet and reserved scientist who wears black skirts. I am talkative and emotional. My husband is a subdued, pensive man. That is why it makes sense for them to be in love. They can spill their secrets to one another in sweet hidden spurts. I offer her coffee.
‘No, but I would like herbal tea if you have it.’
‘How ’bout some Constant Comment?’
‘No thanks, that has caffeine in it.’
She cannot afford to have caffeine at night. It would keep her awake – thinking about my husband. The next morning, she would be bleary-eyed and irritable. In addition to this research project, she has a full-time government job that requires travel and frequent presentations. She must look refreshed each day.
‘Well, what about some ice water?’ I feel foolish that I didn’t know that Constant Comment is not an herbal tea.
‘That would be fine.’ She smiles graciously. She wants to make a positive impression on me. It would not be good for any of us if she sensed I discovered what I already know. My husband becomes absorbed in clearing the table. He starts to wash the dishes absent-mindedly. She observes him with clear appreciation for a man who washes the dishes without being asked.
‘Jamie, watch out!’ my husband yells through the open window at our oldest son. ‘Watch out when you ride into the street!’ He worries that the children will get run over even though we don’t have much traffic in our neighborhood.
‘They are fine, Jim. Don’t hover,’ I caution. He shrugs off my words. His sandy-gray hair falls over his troubled eyes. Whenever I point out the relative safety of the boys, he likes to remind me that they can’t always count on that security in life. They have to be prepared for other eventualities.
The woman who loves my husband scrutinizes these domestic activities with great concentration. She is quite pretty in a natural kind of way. She does not wear eye makeup, but I see evidence of some light blush on her cheeks and a trace of blotted lipstick. Her name is Eloise, which is not a name I cared for until I met her. It reminded me of my grandmother’s best friend ‘El,’ who always picks her teeth at the dinner table while talking loudly. But now the name of Eloise sounds lyrical, lovely, and medieval to me. I use it often when I speak to her.
‘Eloise, have you traveled any more lately?’
‘Just to San Francisco and back last week.’ She makes it seem so routine. I picture her on the airplane peering out the window as she looks forward to the next evening when she’ll return to our home.
She doesn’t ever utter my name. She never says, ‘Yes, Lucy .’ It’s as if she can’t consent to mention my name because that will make my presence more real, my feelings of greater consequence. She does not understand that I have splendid fantasies of her love for my husband.
‘I’ll finish up the dishes, Jim,’ I offer. They need to get some work done on their project in order to make a presentation at the next scientific meeting in the early fall. That is the stated reason for her presence in our home.
All the males in my life have names that start with a ‘J’ – Jim, Jamie, and Jakie, our youngest. I wanted a girl so I could have named her Jenny, but we will not have any more children. I imagine Eloise pregnant with my husband’s child. She would look very trim in a maternity business suit. I wonder at what point she would have to give up traveling because of her condition.
‘Thanks, dear.’ Jim kisses me in front of Eloise every chance he gets. ‘Thanks for dinner.’ He rubs my hip, letting his insistent thumb slip inside the waistband of my jeans.
I can hear Eloise shift behind us with a sigh. She wants my life. I want to give it to her. Not because I do not like it. Not because I want another life, but because it would offer her so much satisfaction. It’s a good life – more than one person at a time can fully enjoy, more than enough for me.
They leave to go work in my husband’s study, the door halfway open. After I finish putting away the dishes, I sit in the family room and read The New Yorker . I dream of a bohemian nightlife in the big city. Every now and then I grasp the words of their serious discussion. They are stationed in front of the computer in a room otherwise darkened by the descending dusk of summertime. The bits and bytes shine all around them. They are caught in a secluded, intimate glow. I like the way my husband’s voice sounds – a gentle monotone that could be invoking words of love. Instead, he compares tiny, twisted ribbons of DNA. Together, my husband and Eloise expect to discover a critical key to the mysteries of life, their combined contribution to the Human Genome Project.
My boys come inside from their haphazard games in the driveway. Even though they just had dinner an hour ago, they are hungry.
‘How ’bout some ice cream?’ I offer.
‘Chocolate,’ proclaims Jamie. ‘Thrawberry,’ counters Jakie. His s s get lost in a thicket of other combined consonants. ‘Vanilla,’ I hear from the study. Jim appears at the doorway and leans against the frame wearing cut-offs and a torn T-shirt. I admire the way his shorts hang low on his hips, as if they can barely manage to stay on him.
‘Vanilla and thrawberry and chocolate for me,’ wanting it all, I add to the ice cream chorus. I hear Eloise in the background laughing familiarly. She has learned our evening ritual. Jim joins the boys in the kitchen, and they invade the freezer.
‘We all thream for i-thream,’ they sing together.
I can discern Eloise’s diminutive body now embraced by Jim’s chair in front of the computer. She enters information quickly, as if there is no time in life for an ice cream break. She evidently believes he will love her back if she conducts this study for him. It seems she likes sitting in his chair because she rubs her shiny hair against it, hoping to leave dark strands with her scent, which she intends for him to savor long after she departs.
‘No thrawberry!’ I hear a wail from the kitchen.
Now I remember that we ate it all last night, that Jim and I finished it off after the boys had gone to bed. We sat at the kitchen table with the thrawberry carton in front of us. No bowls, only one large spoon – and we fed strawberry ice cream to one another as if it was the feathery pink-and-white cake at our wedding reception some ten years ago. We ate it so quickly that it gave me a jagged ice cream headache that vanished before we went to bed. So after my shower, we made love like ravenous honeymooners. I impersonated the wild, concealed emotions of Eloise – to myself. Who, besides my husband, knows his private fantasies? But I visualized her imagining what it feels like to be me, sleeping with him each night, his lust swaddling me.
‘Yes, but we do have some marshmallows,’ Jamie tries to console Jakie, interrupting my reverie. He wants to shut