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Authors: Michael Marshall
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I’d once had a son, and he died.
C H A P T E R 8
Kristina watched through the coffee-store window as her mother
started walking up Kelly Street back toward her lair. She took a
deep breath, and let it out very slowly.
Children, huh. Again. For God’s sake .
It was actually kind of amazing how her mom kept going on
about it—“amazing” in the limited sense of “unbelievably annoying.”
It was her sole subject matter, apparently. She never pitched in about
her daughter not having a husband, or a boyfriend . . . but a child —
that was the only story in town. As if she’d been this perfect Earth
Mother fi gure, a Good Housekeeping bake-and-nurture paragon, and
was just dying to see the maternal genius bearing fruit into the next
generation. As if the whole of male-kind was a sideshow or distrac-
tion, the unending line of women the only thing that ever mattered
(because a grand daughter was what her mom wanted, let’s face it,
not just any fl avor of grandchild)—and her own not-much-lamented
husband had not been father to someone who’d loved him.
As if she honestly didn’t realize there had been occasions when
her own daughter had fervently—though unsuccessfully—wished
her dead.
B A D T H I N G S 57
She ordered more coffee. Might as well. Her shift didn’t start until
fi ve, so why not while away another fair-trade, kind-to-all-God’s-
creatures hot beverage, savoring the rich pageant of a Black Ridge
afternoon?
After a few minutes a car trundled past, its tires making sticky
sounds on the wet surface. A little later, a different car went by in the
other direction. Hold the front fucking page.
Five minutes after that a girl whom she’d known back in school
waddled diagonally across the street, toward the hair salon. By the
look of it this girl had successfully made it to motherhood, at least
six or seven times. Either that or she needed to seriously rein back on
the snacks.
The sight of the salon triggered the thought that Kristina should/
could/might as well get her own hair attended to, and so she called
and made an appointment for a couple days’ time.
Then she put the phone back in her bag, and returned to staring
out of the window. A few more minutes passed, as though on their
way to somewhere they’d already been told wasn’t worth the visit.
What bugged her most was she didn’t even know why she’d come
back, and in truth this was probably part of why conversations with
her mother tended to start scrappy and go downhill from there. She
knew that her mother regarded her return as a moral victory, and
Kristina wanted to be able to explain and defend it in some way other
than pure laziness or worse. She didn’t want to believe it had been
inevitable.
That her mom had won, basically.
But why do you go back to where you and your parents and their
parents and grandparents were born, after a decade away? Friends?
Nope—all moved away, either geographically or into the snug dens
of parenthood. Father? Dead. Dear Mother herself? God, no. There’s
plenty room in a Christmas card to be reminded of your alleged re-
58 Michael Marshall
sponsibilities, and/or be given a hard time about the only important
thing in life, spawning a child.
She’d left town less than a week after her eighteenth birthday.
Good-bye, thanks for not much, I’m done here . Worked, paid taxes, and leased apartments in fi ve different states and three foreign countries,
including a wacky six months in Thailand as the weird tall chick tend-
ing bar: by all means buy her a drink but please understand it isn’t
getting you anywhere. Some of it had been interesting, some of it fun,
a lot of it day-to-day and hard to remember in detail—even the high
times and hair-raising scrapes. She could have kept doing it, though,
or things like it. Could have stuck it out in Vermont or Chicago or
Barcelona, dug herself a life or just committed properly to the ones
she’d tried,
C H A P T E R 8
Kristina watched through the coffee-store window as her mother
started walking up Kelly Street back toward her lair. She took a
deep breath, and let it out very slowly.
Children, huh. Again. For God’s sake .
It was actually kind of amazing how her mom kept going on
about it—“amazing” in the limited sense of “unbelievably annoying.”
It was her sole subject matter, apparently. She never pitched in about
her daughter not having a husband, or a boyfriend . . . but a child —
that was the only story in town. As if she’d been this perfect Earth
Mother fi gure, a Good Housekeeping bake-and-nurture paragon, and
was just dying to see the maternal genius bearing fruit into the next
generation. As if the whole of male-kind was a sideshow or distrac-
tion, the unending line of women the only thing that ever mattered
(because a grand daughter was what her mom wanted, let’s face it,
not just any fl avor of grandchild)—and her own not-much-lamented
husband had not been father to someone who’d loved him.
As if she honestly didn’t realize there had been occasions when
her own daughter had fervently—though unsuccessfully—wished
her dead.
B A D T H I N G S 57
She ordered more coffee. Might as well. Her shift didn’t start until
fi ve, so why not while away another fair-trade, kind-to-all-God’s-
creatures hot beverage, savoring the rich pageant of a Black Ridge
afternoon?
After a few minutes a car trundled past, its tires making sticky
sounds on the wet surface. A little later, a different car went by in the
other direction. Hold the front fucking page.
Five minutes after that a girl whom she’d known back in school
waddled diagonally across the street, toward the hair salon. By the
look of it this girl had successfully made it to motherhood, at least
six or seven times. Either that or she needed to seriously rein back on
the snacks.
The sight of the salon triggered the thought that Kristina should/
could/might as well get her own hair attended to, and so she called
and made an appointment for a couple days’ time.
Then she put the phone back in her bag, and returned to staring
out of the window. A few more minutes passed, as though on their
way to somewhere they’d already been told wasn’t worth the visit.
What bugged her most was she didn’t even know why she’d come
back, and in truth this was probably part of why conversations with
her mother tended to start scrappy and go downhill from there. She
knew that her mother regarded her return as a moral victory, and
Kristina wanted to be able to explain and defend it in some way other
than pure laziness or worse. She didn’t want to believe it had been
inevitable.
That her mom had won, basically.
But why do you go back to where you and your parents and their
parents and grandparents were born, after a decade away? Friends?
Nope—all moved away, either geographically or into the snug dens
of parenthood. Father? Dead. Dear Mother herself? God, no. There’s
plenty room in a Christmas card to be reminded of your alleged re-
58 Michael Marshall
sponsibilities, and/or be given a hard time about the only important
thing in life, spawning a child.
She’d left town less than a week after her eighteenth birthday.
Good-bye, thanks for not much, I’m done here . Worked, paid taxes, and leased apartments in fi ve different states and three foreign countries,
including a wacky six months in Thailand as the weird tall chick tend-
ing bar: by all means buy her a drink but please understand it isn’t
getting you anywhere. Some of it had been interesting, some of it fun,
a lot of it day-to-day and hard to remember in detail—even the high
times and hair-raising scrapes. She could have kept doing it, though,
or things like it. Could have stuck it out in Vermont or Chicago or
Barcelona, dug herself a life or just committed properly to the ones
she’d tried,
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