“In this boat, our son caught the biggest fish I’ve ever seen.”
“This boat?”
“On this pier I watched him make his first dive.”
“Yes?”
“See that tree? The oak, I mean. He climbed it every summer. We finally built him that tree house.”
“I’m sure it was lovely.”
“I’m not much of a carpenter, I smashed my thumb more than a few times, but we did it.”
“You always did what you set out to do.”
“Remember how he looked when he returned from the army? So tall, so grown-up?”
“Yes dear, if you say so.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You already know.”
“What?”
“Darling, how much longer will you keep doing this?”
“I don’t know. It’s not like we have much left anyway.”
“Yes, but why do you haunt yourself like this?”
“He haunts me. Our son haunts me. I don’t know, if we’d had more children, it might’ve been different.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t do that for you.”
“I wasn’t blaming you.”
“I know, but I still wish I could’ve done more.”
“I said it’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault. It’s life.”
“So why do you do this to yourself?”
“Because he’s all I had. All I ever wanted was a son.”
“Yes, but why are you doing this?”
“We’re almost done now, memories are all we have left.”
“That’s what you’re calling them?”
“Why not?”
“Because they aren’t real, they’re lies.”
“What good’s the truth if it kills your soul?”
“Lies won’t save it.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I don’t know. Strength, maybe?”
“Strength? Well, I’m tired of being strong. We lost everything, lost it all, and I was strong. You were sick and we lost the house and all those years I stayed strong and what’d it get us? And now we’re old, what’s it matter anymore? What’s it matter now?”
“I’m sorry, darling.”
“Oh, don’t be, I’m not angry. I really don’t care anymore. It’s done and over.”
“All right.”
“It’s just — I’m just so damned tired now.”
“Let’s go home then.”
“Sometimes I think about everything we never had. In the past I always thought tomorrow would be better. But it never was, and now there’s no tomorrows left.”
“I know.”
“We were cheated.”
“Yes.”
“We were cheated and it’s not fair. It’s just not fair, and oh dear god, I never even got to cut the cord.”
“I know, darling, I know. Here, do you want to sit down for a bit?”
“No, please don’t, just stop. I just — I think I just want to see the field where he used to play, and where he kissed his first girl. Just one more time.”
“All right, dear, you can show me on the way home. It’s not far, come on now. Lean on me.”
Milan Smith has published 30 short stories in various magazines, including Pear Noir, Every Day Fiction, Midnight Times, and Crimson Highway. After he got his B.S. degree in business from the University of Florida, he worked in the business world for two years, and hated it. Then he got job as a reporter for a year, and hated that. Finally, he decided to try writing, and now works part-time at night and writes during the mornings, and he loves it.
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18 Responses to “MEMORIES • by Milan Smith”
Comments
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June 27th, 2009 at 12:22 am
This didn’t work for me.
The main problem is that I couldn’t work out what happened to the son.
I gather he returned from the war (which is a good thing), but the father is still haunted.
Was the son injured? Did he have traumatic stress disorder and kill himself?
June 27th, 2009 at 1:31 am
I’m with Paul. The story seems incomplete. On second reading, my perception is that the son was stillborn and all the life story was made up by the father. However, I’m not certain that I got it right, and I don’t like to work that hard to understand a story.
June 27th, 2009 at 3:57 am
Sharon’s interpretation is what I immediately went for when we hit the “Because they aren’t real, they’re lies” line.
The meaning seems clear enough. A nicely balanced dialog piece between two people too tired to lie, but have to just to get by.
June 27th, 2009 at 5:41 am
I am thinking, too, that the baby died at birth…”cheated…never even got to cut the cord.”
I am assuming they were discussing the aspects of his life he might have had.
June 27th, 2009 at 5:43 am
On the first reading I got confused halfway through on who was speaking. On the second reading, I decided the son had never existed and the wife was indulging the old man – but only to a point. On the third reading, I still didn’t really have a reason to care about either of them – all they are is snippets of overheard conversation.
I’ve got nothing against dialogue-only stories, but it’s harder with them to induce empathy, and that’s the failing in this one.
June 27th, 2009 at 6:06 am
I don’t get it. Apparently some of it was trur and some was lies, but I’ll be darned if I can figure out what or which. Didn’t like it.
And I found the paragraph structure odd and distracting … speech, reply, scene break (as I normally interpret an extra blank line), over and over. Why? It certainly didn’t add anything.
June 27th, 2009 at 6:16 am
This was very sad. I get the impression the baby was stillborn and they just couldn’t have any more and he’s making up a life for the child that never was. Very sad.
June 27th, 2009 at 7:56 am
What’s the reason they couldn’t have children? If they knew it before and if its no one’s fault, the complaining should stop before they totally destroy what they DO have together.
Dialogue stories are interesting and hard to do because all the voices must be distinguishable in character. This story does it well without relying on foreign accents, speech impediments, etc.
This would make a nice contained little snippet of a movie for someone to direct and act out as a home start in film, but I suspect “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” already has claws into it. Anyway, well done dialogue in this, not overplayed.
June 27th, 2009 at 8:06 am
I’m in the “stillborn” camp. I didn’t find enough distinction in the voices to know who was speaking. I assumed that the “carpenter” line belonged to the husband (chauvinist presumption, I know) but the voices weren’t distinct enough for me to differentiate without counting lines. Good effort, but not quite there for me.
Best,
–John
June 27th, 2009 at 8:18 am
I assumed they *did* have a child, but he died in the war. Thay’s why one of the first things he said was “Remember when our son came home from the war?”
I actually really liked this story, you could feel the characters pain in the dialouge, and it was really well writtwn.
June 27th, 2009 at 8:30 am
J. C. Towler – The man is firm voiced, insistant, petulant, and though he says he doesn’t, he blames her. The woman is softly wistful, regretful, concerned about the man’s feelings, about their lives as well as her own, but wants to pull him up to acceptance of reality, not pretence.
Joyce gave a good description of the skeletal framework of the story.
June 27th, 2009 at 8:33 am
Jen – I had that same thought as I read it, but the characters’ conversation clarified the situation further. It’s probably the father’s daydream that the son came home a hero.
June 27th, 2009 at 10:30 am
The baby was stillborn, but the father imagined all the life that the boy could have had . . . at least that’s what I got out of it. I liked it.
However, in these days . . . I always want to know why they didn’t adopt, or foster children . . . my sympathy with the characters is limited because of my own ideas.
June 27th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Telling what’s going on by “reading” the voices – sorry, that’s not one of my strong points. Oh, if the difference is great enough, like a hillbilly drawl vs. a veddy veddy British accent, yeah. But two people speaking “standard English” and you have to notice that one is more assertive than the other, I’m likely to miss at least some of that. So if that’s crucial to the story, as some say here, I’m probably not going to like the story. Not my thing.
June 27th, 2009 at 3:11 pm
A very moving story. I loved that the son’s existence and fate were left vague. That allowed me my interpretation. So accurate in portraying the human experience. Five stars and more.
June 27th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
I liked it but, like the other readers, I found it a little confusing. The subtle and careful word placement helped me to make my own sense of the story and, in the end, I came to a conclusion.
Whether I’m right or whether I’m wrong I like the theme but I think it could have been told in a more literary style. I guess it’s all a bit obvious and out there, whilst still being clever.
June 27th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
Oh that’s lovely! Sad, but so beautiful.
July 1st, 2009 at 11:47 am
This is a really sad story. After reading, I decided that the baby was stillborn and the parts of his life were made up by the father, which was even sadder than a boy who died in the war. However, I wish there would have been something just a bit more concrete so that I could be a little more sure of my interpretation.